The Rome IndexRoman mythology & the city's founding stories
The gods, heroes and legends behind what you're actually looking at.
Romulus and Remus
The founding myth of Rome: twin brothers, sons of Mars (god of war) and a Vestal Virgin, abandoned in the Tiber and suckled by a she-wolf. Romulus killed Remus in a dispute over where to build the city, and named it after himself. The Capitoline Wolf sculpture in the Capitoline Museums depicts the she-wolf — the twins were added in the Renaissance.
The gods in the buildings
The Pantheon was a temple to all the gods — pan (all) theon (gods). Saturn's temple in the Forum held the Roman treasury. Every major god had a counterpart in the existing Greek pantheon: Jupiter = Zeus, Mars = Ares, Venus = Aphrodite, Mercury = Hermes.
Why mythology matters for visitors
Roman art and architecture refers constantly to mythological stories — Bernini's Apollo and Daphne (Apollo chasing a nymph who turns into a tree) and the Four Rivers Fountain (allegorical gods representing the world's great rivers) both make more sense with the stories behind them.