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In Rome, her sanctuary was near the Porta Lavernalis. The Roman Colosseum Rome (Italian and Latin Roma) is the capital city of Italy, and of its Lazio region. ...

Laverna is the Roman goddess of thieves, who hears the prayers of robbers. The Porta Lavernalis (Lavernal Gate) on the Aventine Hill was named for Her, and She had an altar nearby. She also had a sacred grove on the Via Saleria, a famous ancient highway that went crosswise across the calf of the boot of Italy, beginning in Rome, following the River Tiber for a ways, then crossing the Apennine Mountains to the Adriatic Sea.

Originally an Underworld goddess of the Etruscans, Laverna became goddess of thieves because thieves operate in darkness. Her name is said to derive either from the Latin latere ("to lurk"), or levare ("to relieve, lessen or lighten", something pickpockets certainly do) and levator ("a thief").

A place with a name quite similar to Laverna that also has an Underworld connection is Lake Avernus, situated in an old volcano's crater near Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) in Campania. It was a desolate, forbidding place, believed by the Romans to be an entrance to the Underworld--both Odysseus (on the advice of Kirke) and Aeneas were said to have communicated with the Underworld there. Named after the unhealthy air from the marshes that bordered it, Lake Avernus is not far from the Shrine of the Cumaean Sibyl, who spoke with the Dead. The Romans (incorrectly) thought the name derived from the Greek aornos meaning, "no birds", because the marsh gasses were so powerful they were believed to kill birds flying over the lake. The groves surrounding the lake were sacred to Hekate and called luci averni.

Furina, a Goddess later associated with Laverna, was originally a very ancient Etruscan Goddess of thieves who ruled over the Earth and the dark. She had an annual festival called the Furrinalia, Her own priest, and a grove or shrine on the Janiculum, the ridge alongside the west bank of the Tiber, opposite the Aventine Hill. She was sometimes confused with the Furiae (the Furies, the Roman name for the Greek Erinyes), due to the similarity of Her name. From the same root as Furina (which means "thief") comes our word "furtive".

Alternate names: Lativerna, Furina

From: http://www.thaliatook.com/laverna.html