In Piazza San Rufo (San Rufo Square), according to the Varronian tradition, there’s the so-called Umbilicus Italiae, the exact geographical centre of Italy.
Piazza San Rufo is enclosed between the imposing buildings of the historic town centre, those rising on the main streets, Via Roma and Via Garibaldi. In the middle of the square, you can see a stretch of walls under the pavement, what remains of the first Roman city wall. The value of this area is remembered with a plaque and a monument with a singular shape, located right in the center of the square and which is nicely called “la caciotta” (Caciotta describes a wide range of simple, rural cheeses from central Italy that can be made with either ewe’s, cow’s, goat’s, or buffalo’s milk), due to its rounded and circular design. The work was carried out between the 80s and 90s, after the twinning with the Georgian capital Tblisi. The caciotta seems to recall the base of a column, its surface showing the picture of the Italian peninsula accompanied by the epigraph “Umbilicus Italiae” that runs along the semi-circumference of the monument itself.