Umbilicus urbis Romae

The umbilicus urbis is located in the Roman Forum in Rome. The small temple was regarded as the hub of the city and a center of the Roman Empire. From here, the miles of Roman military roads were counted. At the same time he was regarded as Mundus, as a place where the touch upper world and the underworld. The gods of the underworld were offered victims Built in Republican times here. The still visible remains of a small foundation, derived from the Severan period.

The umbilicus urbis / Mundus Supposedly built by Romulus with the help of Etruscans. Plutarch writes:

" After Romulus Remus had the [ ... ] buried, he founded the city, to which he summoned from Etruria men who all the instruction and guidance gave to certain sacred rules and records, as mysteries. It has been excavated a circular pit at the current comitium and firstfruits, incarnated by everything you had to the custom after as well and in nature as required in use. Recently everyone brought a handful of earth from the land, whence he had come, and cast them out, and then mixed it all. This pit they call with the same word as the universe: mundus. Then you described them as around the center of a circle the city limits. "