Domus Aurea, Rome

Domus Aurea is Nero’s Roman palace, created after the fire of sixty-four devastated much of Rome. What survives belongs to a vast landscaped imperial estate on Oppian Hill, replacing Nero’s earlier Domus Transitoria. Its name, the “Golden House,” reflects the precious metal used lavishly in its decoration.

Nero took a personal interest in the scheme and directed its architect-engineers, Celer and Severus. Gardens, vineyards, groves, and pasture once made this palace feel like countryside inserted into the city; an artificial lake lay within the grounds, on the site later occupied by the Flavian Amphitheatre. After Nero died, later emperors returned the land to public use.

They removed marble, jewels, and ivory, then buried much of the complex beneath new building works. That destruction preserved the painted decoration: earth sealed it away from damaging damp. At the close of the fifteenth century, a young Roman fell into these underground rooms and found painted figures all around him.

Renaissance artists soon descended to study them, and the newly encountered ornament transformed decorative painting far beyond Rome. The surviving archaeological complex contains more than one hundred fifty rooms, a remarkable fragment of an imperial fantasy turned subterranean ruin.