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The Janiculum (; ), occasionally known as the Janiculan Hill, is a hill in western Rome, Italy. Although it is the second-tallest hill (the tallest being Monte Mario) in the contemporary city of Rome, the Janiculum does not figure among the proverbial Seven Hills of Rome, being west of the Tiber and outside the boundaries of the ancient city.
The Villa Lante al Gianicolo by Giulio Romano (1520–21) is an important early building by the Mannerist master, also with magnificent views.
In Roman mythology, Janiculum is the name of an ancient town founded by the god Janus (the two-faced god of beginnings). In Book VIII of the Aeneid by Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), King Evander shows Aeneas (the Trojan hero of this epic poem) the ruins of Saturnia and Janiculum on the Capitoline Hill near the Arcadian city of Pallanteum (the future site of Rome) (see line 54, Bk. 8). Virgil uses these ruins to stress the significance of the Capitoline Hill as the religious center of Rome.
According to Livy, the Janiculum was incorporated into ancient Rome during the time of king Ancus Marcius to prevent an enemy from occupying it. It was fortified by a wall, and a Pons Sublicius was built across the Tiber to join it to the rest of the city.Livy, Ab urbe condita, 1:33
During the war between Rome and Clusium in 508 BC, it is said that the forces of Lars Porsena occupied the Janiculum and laid siege to Rome.Livy, Ab urbe condita, 2.9–15
/ref> they sat astride the aqueduct Aqua Traiana and were in brick-faced concrete with a cocciopesto floor. In the limited excavated area, two branched obliquely off the Aqua Traiana, turned to run parallel to the aqueduct for some distance, and then turned back to feed into the aqueduct again. It appeared that the northern mill race had 3 or 4 millwheels of 2.30 m diameter and width about 1.65 m to provide a sufficiently large working area, but only 2.6 m between their axle centres, which must have reduced efficiency due to turbulence between them. The southern race had one larger wheel.
The site resembles Barbegal, although the excavations show that they were undershot rather than overshot in design (i. e. with the stream entering at the bottom of the wheel, not the top). The mills were still in use in 537, when the Goths besieging the city cut off their water supply, the Aqua Traiana.Procopius, De Bello Gothico I.XIX They were later restored and may have remained in operation until at least the time of Pope Gregory IV (827–844).Örjan Wikander, 'Water-mills in Ancient Rome' Opuscula Romana XII (1979), 13–36.
The Aurelian Walls were continued up the hill by the emperor Aurelian (reigned AD 270–275) to include the .
The mills were already known from observations by R. Lanciani in the 1880s.
Daily at noon, a cannon fires once from the Janiculum in the direction of the Tiber as a time signal. This tradition goes back to December 1847, when the cannon of the Castel Sant'Angelo gave the sign to the surrounding belltowers to start ringing at midday. In 1904, the ritual was transferred to the Janiculum and continued until 1939. On 21 April 1959, popular appeal convinced the Commune of Rome to resume the tradition after a twenty-year interruption.
The hill is featured in the third section of Ottorino Respighi's tone poem Pines of Rome.
The hill also features a number of statues and monuments of prominent Italians. A 2011 guide published by the local Associazione Amilcare Cipriani group, after an extensive restoration of these monuments, lists a total of 84 busts on the hill.http://www.appasseggio.it/getFile.php?id=306 (Italian-language; pdf file)
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