HIDDEN GEMS: EVERY MOVIE FAN knows the scene from the 1953 romantic comedy Roman Holiday (below) in which Audrey Hepburn puts her hand in the Mouth of Truth – La Bocca della Verità – knowing that it could be bitten off for telling porky pies to Gregory Peck.
As it transpires, one of them is being as economical with the truth as the other, and so she gets away with it, in a performance charming enough to win her an Oscar.
So popular did the scene become that coin-operated replicas of the Bocca turned up all over Europe – particularly popular, apparently, in Spain, Hungary and Denmark, and in motorway service stations across the UK.
What few of us know is the location of the original. Yes, it is in Rome. And, yes, it is accessible to those of us who want to “do an Audrey” – if we can find our way to the Greek Orthodox Church of Santa Maria, in the Cosmedin quarter.
Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin is nestled in the heart of the city’s ancient cattle market, known, for reasons that will be apparent to Latin scholars, as the Forum Boarium.
The best way to find it is to take a map, head for Circus Maximus and, once in the vicinity, ask a local. It’s only a stone’s throw away, in the handily named Plaza Bocca della Verità.
The Bocca itself is a huge stone disc carved from Pavonazzetto marble and lying against the wall in the portico of the church.
That famous head, with its straggling hair and beard, belongs to the sea god Oceanus. And the less-than-glamorous reality, say antiquarians, is that the disc, placed flat, was probably once used as a drain cover, because this marshy district next to the River Tiber was notoriously prone to flooding. Sorry!
Do you know of a hidden gem? E-mail us at go@irishtimes.com