Strolling for Rome, far and wide, the other day I happened to come across the very famous Horse's Mouth. La Bocca della Verità is a place you know you are in Rome, even if you often don't know exactly where it is, but you never go to see it. It is true, if you have already been to the Mouth of Truth, that's enough, there's not much to see, but at least once, during a visit to Rome, you really have to go.
You will recognize the Mouth of Truth by the long line that each time is in front of the monument. To take a picture of the mouth you have to pay each one 0.50€ and you also have to hurry up a bit as there is a whole queue quivering to arrive, put your hand, have a click and go away. As I told you, nothing too exciting to tell the truth, but once it can be done.
You will recognize the Mouth of Truth immediately upon arrival. Someone will have seen him in some movies and someone instead will have seen him in photos, impossible not to have even his “face” in mind. This marble mask, walled into one of the sides of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin of Rome since 1632, is dated around the XNUMXst century.
This bearded male face, in ancient times, had a function that has not yet been well understood what it was. An uncertain function. Some say it was a manhole, while others don't go so far back in time and link its history to when the Bocca della Verità is mentioned for the first time in the XNUMXth century in the early Mirabilia Urbis Romae, the medieval guide to Pilgrims of Ancient Rome, where it comes to the Bocca attributed the power to pronounce oracles.
Many legends, not only Italian but also German which were attributed to the Mouth of Truth, but the most famous is certainly a popular legend. A popular tale is that of an unfaithful woman who, led by her suspicious husband to the Mouth of Truth to be tested, managed to save her hand with a cunning. In fact, the accused woman told her lover to show up too on the day she would be tested and that, pretending to be mad, he hugged her in front of everyone. The lover performed perfectly what she requested. So the woman, at the moment of putting her hand in the Mouth, could easily swear that in her life she had been embraced only by her husband and by that man that everyone had seen. In this way, the woman managed not to get her hand bitten by her mouth, despite having betrayed her husband.
The name "Horse's Mouth”Appears only in 1485 and the prints and drawings that have followed one another since then give us a different image of the mouth, which was originally located outside the portico of the church.
In addition to the Bocca della Verità, I recommend that you also take a look at the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, which Pope Adrian I had it rebuilt at the end of the eighth century and which was later revised and certainly restructured. Come in and enjoy the structure and floors, we are talking about what is considered one of the oldest churches in Rome.
