For centuries travelers have visited La Piazza della Bocca Della Verità located just south of Rome’s busy center. The significance of this piazza is that the traveler can see in one-stop Rome’s many layers: from the Roman temples, Temple of Hercules and the Temple of Portunus, the Roman stone, La Bocca Della Verità located in the loggia of the sixth century Santa Maria in Cosmedin, to the eighteen-century Fontana dei Tritoni, sculpted in the earlier Baroque style of Lorenzo Bernini.

But Rome and its history do not stand still. Besides its well-known archeological sites, the city is developing a new site that has been hidden in plain sight for decades. I looked carefully at some of my older travel books, including a 1909 edition of the renowned Baedeker’s Italy: from Alps to Naples. There is only passing mention of what we must now define as one of Rome’s most important piazzas: Piazza Augusto Imperatore.