Tradition holds that Romulus and Remus founded the city on the Palatine Hill on 21 April 753 BC — a date the Romans celebrated as their national birthday.
The seven hills were first occupied by separate small settlements with no formal connection between them.
Over time, their inhabitants began to interact — trading, sharing water, building relationships.
The city of Rome came into being as these communities started acting as one, draining the marshy valleys between the hills and turning them into markets and meeting places — fora, in Latin.
In the early 4th century BC, the Servian Walls were built to enclose all seven hills within a single defensive perimeter.
Rome was, from the beginning, a coalition — not a conquest.
Around the city ran the pomerium — a sacred strip of ground marking the official religious boundary of Rome.
Originally traced by Romulus around the Palatine, it defined where the city ended and the outside world began.
Generals had to disband their armies before crossing it — military power had no place inside the sacred city.
No burials were permitted within it.
As Rome grew, emperors periodically extended the pomerium — an act that required a military victory and was treated as a profound religious event.
Rome was built on seven hills — the Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal.
Each developed its own identity: the Palatine became home to emperors, the Capitoline to the gods, the Aventine to the common people.
They are not as dramatic as you might imagine — the Quirinal, the tallest, rises just 61 metres above sea level.
The point was never the height; it was the position above the flood-prone Tiber valley below.
Fun fact: the number seven was considered sacred in the ancient world — and whether Rome genuinely had exactly seven hills, or whether the number was rounded up for symbolic effect, is a question historians still debate.
A few of the 'hills' are really just gentle rises in the ground.
The Viminal, the smallest, barely registers as a hill at all.
