The Palatine Hill in Ancient Rome

Coming down from the Forum on the way to reach the Colosseum, on the right side there is a hill that still today is visited not that often. The hill that we can still see from the second floor of the Colosseum is the hill where the first inhabitants of Rome settled and where archaeologists found remains of the thatched huts of the iron age. Indeed the Palatine has many layers. First of all ,20 feet down below there are the remains of the republican houses like the house of the Griffins, which is a good example of second style in Roma paintings. This mansion was then erased by the foundations of the Flavian Palaces built by Vespasian and Domitian in the years 80 - 90 CE. The last who improved the structured of the palatine was Septimius Severus with a monument that does not exist anymore: the Septizodium. If we really want to know how the Septizodium looked like before its demolition in the Renaissance time, we have to go to see the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel because Botticelli painted it when he needed a background for his panel frescoes.