Bocca della verità

Under the cloister of the “Santa Maria in Cosmedin” church there is “Bocca della Verità”. Built in 1632, it is a huge marble mask, very likely to have formerly been an ancient drain, with a diameter of 1,80 m, representing the head of a faun with an open wide mouth.

Its fame is linked to the popular tradition, as the story goes that it used to lop off the hand of people who didn’t tell the truth.
According to an ancient story, the wife of a roman gentleman, charged of adultery, was taken to the mask and underwent a truth challenge.
On the chosen day, immediately before getting to “Bocca della Verità”, she tried escaping, running amongst people around, reached a man and asked him for help.
The crowd caught her and brought her to the oracle. The woman put her hand in to the mouth of the giant mask and swore she had never been hold by other men’s arms but her husband’s and those of the man she had embraced short before. Nothing happened: the happy husband believed her wife and never got to know that the man his wife had embraced a few minutes before was her lover.
The magic was over and “Bocca della Verità”, misleaded by the woman’s courage, no longer fulfilled its judging task.

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