Part of my study abroad trip to London and Rome in September is a series of blog posts about the things we see and do while on the trip. This is the fifth of seven required posts about Rome and is about a sculpture: the Capitoline Wolf.
For a statue that I had read about several times, seen pictures of, and even knew where it was supposed to be, it wasn’t until my third time walking past where it was on display that I finally actually noticed it.
Set atop a pillar, atop Capitoline Hill, I finally saw this on one of my last days in Rome when cross over top of the hill. It was beside a path I’d walked down several times, just around the corner of a building, and that is the only reason I can imagine for my not having noticed it before.
Depicting Romulus and Remus suckling at the wolves teats, it is one of the founding myths of Rome writ in bronze and remains a source of controversy over how old it actually is.
I suspect that the one I saw is just a reproduction, and that the real one is inside the nearby Capitoline Museum. There was no time to see the Capitoline Museum on this trip, next time I am in Rome I’ll have to see if the one in the museum differs at all for being out of the weather.