You descend through a cleft in the Esquiline hillside into cold, damp air, and the painted walls of Nero's palace come up out of the dark around you. This is the Domus Aurea, the Golden House: a vast landscaped complex built by the Emperor Nero largely on the Oppian Hill after the great fire of 64 AD had destroyed much of Rome. The modern archaeological site holds more than 150 rooms, about a third of them open to the public. You visit in a small guided group, and the darkness and the moisture are part of what you came for.
Walk Through the Rooms the Renaissance Came Down to See
Construction began after the fire and was nearly complete before Nero's death in 68 – a short span for so enormous a project. According to Tacitus, Nero took great interest in every detail and oversaw the engineer-architects Celer and Severus. Suetonius records that when the building was dedicated, Nero said only that he had at last begun to live like a human being. He never saw it finished; his successors, embarrassed by its extravagance, stripped it of marble, jewels and ivory, and within forty years the palace was obliterated beneath earth and new buildings. Paradoxically, that burial is what saved the wall paintings, protecting them from moisture.
When a young Roman inadvertently fell through a cleft in the Esquiline hillside at the end of the 15th century, he found himself in a strange grotto filled with painted figures. Soon Rome's young artists were having themselves let down on boards knotted to ropes to see for themselves. Raphael and Michelangelo crawled underground and were let down shafts to study the paintings, which were a revelation of the true world of antiquity. The Fourth Style frescoes uncovered then have faded now, but look for the graffiti signatures scratched into a fresco inches apart – Casanova and the Marquis de Sade among them, beside the autographs of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Martin van Heemskerck and Filippino Lippi. The influence of these grotesque decorations spread into Raphael's decoration for the loggias in the Vatican and returned at intervals ever since, notably in late 18th-century Neoclassicism.
Stand Beneath the Vaults of Nero's Entertainment Pavilion
The Golden House building on the Oppian Hill was extended from Nero's earlier Domus Transitoria and designed mainly as a place of entertainment: some 300 rooms, with few sleeping quarters. Rooms sheathed in polished white marble with paintings above had richly varied floor plans, complete with niches and exedras that concentrated or dispersed the daylight. There were pools in the floors and fountains splashing in the corridors. The building plan splits in two: the western part is simple and classic, characterised by perpendicular axes and built around a large rectangular courtyard that opened toward the valley and the lake; the eastern part is more complex in layout. The complex also covered parts of the slopes of the Palatine and Caelian hills, with an artificial lake in the marshy valley – groves of trees, pastures with flocks and vineyards, a countryside in the city.
Much of the palace is still unexcavated and its full extent can only be approximated, but the pavilion's scale is what stays with you: the ceilings once glittered with semi-precious stones and ivory finishes above precious mosaics, frescoed walls and marble rooms designed to play with light. The name comes from its huge golden dome. Digging up the pavilion let moisture in, though, and humidity inside can reach 90%; heavy rain has been blamed for the collapse of a chunk of ceiling, and the weight of earth above has caused problems too. That is why you see only part of the site, and why the visit is carefully managed.
Make the Most of a Guided Visit
- Book ahead, and book in English. Visits are possible only by guided tour, in small groups, and require advance online reservation. English tours run on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, as restoration work continues on weekdays.
- Expect multimedia. The visit includes multimedia installations; some tours add a virtual-reality viewing of Nero's palace.
- Dress for the underground. The air is cold and humid – the same damp that once threatened the frescoes. A layer you can put on will serve you better than sandals and a sun hat.
- Give it a morning or an afternoon, not a spare hour. The tour is fixed in length and entry is by group, so plan the rest of your day around it rather than squeezing it between sights.
- Time your year. Rome's public heritage sites open free of charge during "La settimana dei beni culturali", typically in mid-May, and government-owned museums and sites have free admission on the first Sunday of every month – useful for the rest of your itinerary, though the Domus Aurea's own access is by booked tour.
Find It Under the Trees of the Oppian
The entrance is at Viale Domus Aurea, Parco Oppio, on the Oppian Hill; the nearest metro stop is Colosseo. You reach the park by the wide, tree-lined path that climbs through Colle Oppio from beside the Colosseum – the Golden House lies underneath it. The site reopened to visitors in 2014 after years of closure for restoration and safety work, and you are walking through a place that has been closed, partly reopened and closed again more than once; treat your booking as the fixed point of the day.
What Else Is Close By
You are in the heart of ancient Rome, so the rest of the day writes itself. The Colosseum stands on the site of Nero's artificial lake, and the Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum are a short walk away. The Pantheon is within reach in Old Rome, while the Vatican Museums and the Cappella Sistina lie across the river for another day.
Reserve your English-language tour for a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, put on a warm layer, and let the rope-and-board descents of Renaissance artists become your own few steps down into the dark. The Golden House rewards the traveller who plans the booking first and builds the Roman day around it.