Domus Aurea: Nero's Buried Golden House
Why is it significant?
Walk into the park on the Colle Oppio and look at the brick ruins rising from the grass, the arches half sunk into the ground. These are the walls of the Baths of Trajan.
Key Facts
| Place | Domus Aurea: Nero's Buried Golden House |
|---|---|
| Address | Via della Domus Aurea 1, 00184 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.89130, 12.49510 |
| Part of Walk | Emperors, Saints and Alchemists: Monti & the Esquiline Hill |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the park on the Colle Oppio and look at the brick ruins rising from the grass, the arches half sunk into the ground. These are the walls of the Baths of Trajan. But beneath them, sealed underground like a time capsule, lie the rooms of something far more outrageous: the Domus Aurea, Nero's Golden House.
After the great fire of 64 cleared a huge part of the city centre, Nero took the land for himself. His new palace spread across the hills with gardens, vineyards, woods and pastures, and in the valley where the Colosseum now stands he made an artificial lake. At the entrance stood a bronze statue of himself more than thirty metres tall. When it was finished, he is reported to have said: at last I can begin to live like a human being.
The Roman writer Suetonius describes walls covered with gold and gems, ceilings of ivory that could open to shower guests with flowers and perfume, and a main dining room that turned constantly, day and night, like the heavens. Archaeologists have found an octagonal room with a central opening that may be that room, or near it, and possibly traces of a mechanism.
When Nero died in 68, his successors wanted to erase him. They drained the lake and built the Colosseum there, gave the land back to the people, and filled the rooms of the palace with earth to support the baths above. Then, around 1480, a young man fell through a hole in this hillside and found himself in caves painted with strange figures. Raphael, Pinturicchio and their friends had themselves lowered on ropes with torches to copy the paintings, and scratched their names on the walls.
Because the rooms looked like caves, grotte, the fantastic decorations they found were called grotesques. That is where the word comes from. Raphael then painted them across the Vatican, and grotesques spread across all of European art. The site can be visited only on guided tours, but you are standing above it. Now leave the park by the eastern side and walk toward the high bell tower of the Esquiline.