Palatine Hill (c-500). The Palatine Hill, which is the centremost of the Seven Hills of Rome, is one of the most ancient parts of the city and has been called the first nucleus of the Roman Empire. The site is now mainly a large open-air museum while the Palatine Museum houses many finds from the excavations here and from other ancient Italian sites. Imperial palaces were built here, starting with Augustus. Before imperial times the hill was mostly occupied by the houses of the rich. The hill originally had two summits separated by a depression; the highest part was called Palatium and the other Germalus. Using the Forma Urbis its perimeter enclosed 63 acres; while the Regionary Catalogues of the 4th century enclose 131 acres. According to Livy the Palatine hill got its name from the Arcadian settlers from Pallantium, named from its founder Pallas, son of Lycaon. More likely, it is derived from the noun palātum palate; Ennius uses it once for the heaven, and it may be connected with the Etruscan word for sky, falad. The name of the hill is the etymological origin of the word palace and its cognates in other languages. The Palatine Hill is also the etymological origin of palatine, a 16th-century English adjective that originally signified something pertaining to the Caesar's palace, or someone who is invested with the king's authority. Later its use shifted to a reference to the German Palatinate. The office of the German count palatine had its origins in the comes palatinus, an earlier office in Merovingian and Carolingian times. Another modern English word paladin, came into usage to refer to any distinguished knight under Charlemagne in late renditions of the Matter of France. According to Roman mythology, the Palatine Hill was the location of the cave, known as the Lupercal, where Romulus and Remus were found by the she-wolf Lupa that kept them alive. Another legend occurring on the Palatine is Hercules' defeat of Cacus after the monster had stolen some cattle. Hercules struck Cacus with his characteristic club so hard that it formed a cleft on the southeast corner of the hill, where later a staircase bearing the name of Cacus was constructed. Rome has its origins on the Palatine. Excavations show that people have lived in the area since the 10th century BC. Excavations performed on the hill in 1907 and again in 1948 unearthed a collection of huts believed to have been used for funerary purposes between the 9th and 7th century BC approximating the time period when the city of Rome was founded. Pallantium was an ancient city near the Tiber river on the Italian peninsula. Roman mythology, as recounted in Virgil's Aeneid for example, states that the city was founded by Evander of Pallene and other ancient Greeks sometime previous to the Trojan War. In addition, Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes that Romans say that the city was founded by Greeks from Pallantium of Arcadia, about sixty years before the Trojan war and the leader was Evander. The myth of the city's origin was significant in ancient Roman mythology because Pallantium became one of the cities that was merged later into ancient Rome, thereby tying Rome's origins to the ancient Greek heroes. Other cities in the area were founded by various Italic tribes. Virgil states that Evander named the city in honor of his ancestor, Pallas, although Pausanias as well as Dionysius of Halicarnassus say that Evander's birth city was Pallantium, and thus he named the new city after the one in Arcadia. Dionysius of Halicarnassus also mention that some writers, including Polybius of Megalopolis, say that the town was named after Pallas, who was the son of Heracles and Lavinia, the daughter of Evander, and when he died his grandfather raised a tomb to him on the hill and called the place Pallantium, after him. According to Livy, after the immigration of the Sabines and the Albans to Rome, the original Romans lived on the Palatine. The Palatine Hill was also the site of the ancient festival of the Lupercalia. Many affluent Romans of the Republican period had their residences there. From the start of the Empire Augustus built his palace there and the hill gradually became the exclusive domain of emperors; the ruins of the palaces of at least Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian can still be seen. Augustus also built a temple to Apollo here. The great fire of 64 AD destroyed Nero's palace, the Domus Transitoria, but he replaced it by 69 AD with the even larger Domus Aurea over which was eventually built Domitian's Palace From the 16th century, the hill was owned by the Farnese family and was occupied by the Farnese Gardens, still partially preserved above the remains of the Domus Tiberiana. At the top of the hill, between the Domus Flavia and the Domus Augustana, the Villa Mattei was built in the 16th century, then purchased around 1830 by the Scot Charles Mills who turned it into an elaborate neo-Gothic villa. At the end of the 19th century the villa was converted into a convent. This was partially demolished from 1928 to allow excavations and in the surviving part of the building the Palatine Museum has been installed. Dominating the site is the Palace of Domitian which was rebuilt largely during the reign of Domitian over earlier buildings of Nero. Later emperors, particularly those of the Severan Dynasty, made significant additions to the buildings, notably the Domus Severiana.