One of Julius’s main ambitions as pope was to recapture the grandeur that was Rome. Rome was known as caput mundi, the “capital of the world,” but when Julius was elected in 1503 this title was wishful thinking. The city was a vast ruin. The Palatine Hill, where the palaces of the Roman emperors had once stood, was a mass of shattered rubble among which peasants tended their vineyards. The Capitoline Hill was known as the Monte Caprino because of the goats grazing on its slop