The Hills to the North and East: Pincio, Quirinal,
Viminal, and Esquiline, the more modern city, the N. part of
which is the strangers' quarter.
Rome on the Tiber (left bank), the city of the middle ages
and following centuries, with the Corso Umberto Primo as its
main thoroughfare; now much altered by the construction of
new streets.
Ancient Rome, the southern quarters, containing the chief
monuments of antiquity.
The Right Bank of the Tiber, including the Vatican, St.
Peter's, and Trastevere.
I. The Hills to the North and East: Pincio,
Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline.
The Pincio (Mons Pincius; p. 175), the northernmost height in
Rome, was covered in antiquity with parks and gardens, and played
no conspicuous part in history; but the Quirinal, adjoining it on
the S.E., is mentioned in the earliest traditions of Rome. On the
Quirinal lay the Sabine settlement whose union with that on the
Palatine formed the city of Rome. The Servian Wall (see p. xxx and
the Plan of Ancient Rome, p. 268) ran along the N.W. side of the
Quirinal, and then to the S.E. and E. behind the Baths of Dio-
cletian and the railway-station, enclosing besides the Quirinal the
Viminal (to the S.E.) and a part of the Esquiline (the Cispius
and Oppius). According to the division of the city by Augustus
(p. xxxii), this quarter comprised two districts, the Alta Semita
(Quirinal) and the Esquiliae (Esquiline). The building of Aurelian's
wall shows that this quarter was afterwards extended. In the
middle ages these hills were thinly populated and formed a single
region only, named the Rione Monti, the most spacious of the
city. Its inhabitants, called Montigiani, differed, like those of
Trastevere, in some of their characteristics from the other Romans.
In the latter half of the 16th cent. Pius IV. constructed the street
from the Piazza del Quirinale to the Porta Pia. The second main
street, intersecting this one almost at right angles and leading from
the Pincio to Santa Maria Maggiore, was made by Sixtus V., who
also provided the hills with water. With the exception of these in-
habited quarters almost the entire E. part of Rome was until lately
occupied by vineyards and gardens. But the selection of the city
as the capital of the kingdom of Italy in 1870 gave a strong im-
pulse to its extension, and this quarter has assumed quite a new
aspect since that event.
The region known for ages as the Strangers' Quarter lies at
the W. base and on the slope of the Pincio, its central point being