The Mouth of Truth
If you visit the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin (a beautiful church with a wonderful medieval atmosphere), you will first see a line of people with cameras, under the church portico, waiting to get close to a big stone face with open mouth.
The legend about the Mouth of Truth (Bocca della verità) says that if a lie is told while holding one's right hand in the open mouth, it will bite you. Probably this idea originated in the Middle Ages, when the Bocca was used to see if wives suspected of infidelity were telling the truth.
This spot became particularly famous thanks to the 1953 movie 'Roman Holiday', as the place where Gregory Peck flirts with Audrey Hepburn.
It is curious to know that originally, around the fourth century BC, this stone face was probably just a masque-shaped manhole cover, and was placed in the church portico only later.
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