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The Piazza del Campidoglio, situated on the Capitoline Hill,
which has always been the priviliged seat of divinity and power.
Although it is the lowest and least extensive of the Seven Hills
of Rome.
The square, as an actual urbanistic element, was created only starting
in 1538, when Pope Paul III entrusted its arrangement to Michelangelo.
Beneath the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (dating
from the 6th century), to the left, is the famous Bocca della
Verità (Mouth of Truth), a large stone disk depicting
the face of a faun or river god, with its mouth open. It is probably
a monumental slab to close a drain but, according to legend, the
stone was used to judge people's honesty: whoever told a lie while
holding his hand in the mouth would have ended up pulling out only
the stump.
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