The name of the city of Rieti is traditionally associated with the label "center of Italy": in fact, the Romans identified the median point of our peninsula in Piazza San Rufo, where stands a peculiar monument that the inhabitants of the Sabine capital are used to refer to as "caciotta" because of its rounded appearance that resembles the outline of a cheese wheel. The work was created at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the twinning between Rieti and the Georgian capital Tblisi: the "caciotta" seems to resemble the base of a column and has on its surface the design of the Italian peninsula, accompanied by the epigraph "Umbilicus Italiae" that runs along the semi-circular shape of the monument itself.
A disputed center – The "caciotta" of Piazza San Rufo rises to the role of a tangible sign of the disputed primacy over the geographic center of Italy: the testimonies of the literati Marcus Terentius Varro, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Virgil have for centuries delivered to the city the undisputed role of "Umbilicus Italiae," however, scientific progress has paved the way for the most disparate discussions on the actual validity of this geographic peculiarity. The Military Geographical Institute has attributed primacy to the city of Narni, in the province of Terni: the various measurement criteria adopted have also included Foligno, Orvieto, Monteluco and even a parking lot in Torre Spaccata, a suburb of Rome, in the contention.
