Visiting Nero’s Lost Palace in Rome

Last Updated on October 26, 2024

“In the rest of the house all parts were overlaid with gold and adorned with gems and mother-of-pearl. There were dining-rooms with fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens.” — Suetonius, first-century Roman historian, describing Emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea, or Golden House.

Rome is full of ruins. Some still stand in the open, but many more are underground. Beneath the surface of the Eternal City, remnants of the past lie layer upon layer, a product of each new generation building upon the old.

One of the most intriguing subterranean ruins is Emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea (in Latin, Golden House). Its extravagance is legendary — and was an embarrassment to the Roman emperors who followed. That’s why one of them buried the Domus Aurea, a jewel box of a palace that would remain lost for 1,000 years.

Naturally, I wanted to see it for myself.

My tour of Nero’s Domus Aurea began at a modest building in the park at the top of Esquiline Hill. After a brief introduction, a guide led my group down a pair of ramps into an underground corridor of the once-opulent summer pavilion. Walls of thin red Roman brick soared to high arched ceilings, with rooms opening to one side.

Low, strategically spaced lights dimly illuminated the packed dirt floor, leaving pools of shadows. Other focused lights highlighted doorways and architectural features, or spotlighted bits of frescoes high above. As our guide led us deeper into the structure, she went on to explain the history of the Domus Aurea.

History of the Domus Aurea

Construction on Nero’s summer pavilion began soon after a 10-day fire destroyed a large part of central Rome in 64 AD. The populace suspected Nero set the fire to make room for his new palace. Nero, in turn, found a scapegoat in the Christians, a minority sect with practices that seemed odd to pagan-worshipping Romans.

Undeterred, he bought more than 100 acres of land in the middle of the city and began building his dream house.

Roman emperors are remembered as much for their excesses as their exploits. Even in that crowd of megalomaniacs, Emperor Nero stands out. He imagined himself a poet, actor, musician, and singer and liked nothing better than to perform on stage — at a time when actors held the same social standing as slaves and prostitutes. This scandalous behavior did not endear him to the Senate. Nor did the high taxes on the provinces, which funded his extravagance and incited rebellion across the empire.

Some of that money funded the construction of his Domus Aurea, so named for his lavish use of gilt. Marble, semi-precious stones, and ivory adorned the walls and ceiling; frescoes covered everything else. Nero’s pleasure palace boasted 300 rooms for entertaining, including the famous (infamous?) dining room with the rotating ceiling.

Courtyards opened to pastures, forests, fields, vineyards and an artificial lake — all in the middle of the city. A colossal (106 or 120 feet tall, depending on the source) gilded bronze statue of Nero as the sun god stood at the entrance. Nero died in 68 AD, before construction finished. If the pavilion had been completed, estimates indicate it would have covered a third of Rome. The Domus Aurea’s opulence even embarrassed subsequent emperors, a group not known for modest living.

Although a few future emperors occupied the Domus Aurea, within a decade, its lavish trappings had been removed. Emperor Vespasian drained the lake and built the Flavian Amphitheater, better known today as the Colosseum, on the site. Using 24 elephants, Emperor Hadrian moved Nero’s towering sun god statue to the piazza outside the amphitheater (the Colosseum may have gained its name from the colossal statue beside it).

Finally, in 109 AD, Emperor Trajan filled the Domus Aurea with dirt and built a massive pubic bath complex on top of it. In a city where important buildings can stand for a millennium, Nero’s Golden House vanished after only 40 years.

Touring the Domus Aurea

Deep below the park on Esquiline Hill, our group followed through the maze of dimly lit rooms and corridors. Most of the walls are original to the pavilion, but others were added later to support the extensive bath complex built above it. In many places, brick walls disappear into the gloom, the rooms and corridors between them still full of dirt.

As we walked, our guide pointed out remnants of frescoes with birds, garlands and mythical creatures. Once reopened to the air, the delicate artwork on the walls began deteriorating from moisture and flourishing mold. Humidity in the underground site can reach 90%.

Surprisingly, some panels on the ceilings have survived, their once-vivid colors only slightly faded. One depicts Achilles, of Trojan War fame, throwing off his disguise as a girl and revealing himself to Odysseus. Romans admired the ancient Greeks.

One room still has a marble floor in geometric patterns. Our guide informed us that regularly spaced fist-sized holes indicated where marble panels once hung. She also pointed out architectural details, such as shell-shaped half circles at the end of one room, and stucco reliefs along the wall.

How the Domus Aurea Was Discovered

After half an hour, we came to a room with a man-sized hole in the elaborately frescoed arched ceiling. The Domus Aurea was rediscovered by accident around 1480 when a teenager fell through the hole and landed in an intricately painted grotto — the space between the arched ceiling and the dirt that filled the room. Soon, artists including Michaelangelo and Raphael, were also dropping into the ruins to see the frescoes. The influence of these long-lost artworks can be seen in the Vatican and elsewhere.

On the floor sat rows of low boxes, each containing a virtual reality (VR) headset. This was what we’d been waiting for. At the time of this writing, the VR option is only available on Friday and Saturday mornings. Pro tip: get tickets several months in advance as they sell out quickly.

With the VR goggles on, the bare brick walls and ruined ceiling were transformed. As I turned my head, the room appeared as it may have been in Nero’s time. Red marble walls shone in the sunlight streaming in through the opening to the flower-filled garden. Frescoes in vivid colors filled the ceiling, where gilt gleamed and sparkled.

Though we were all seated, the VR goggles made it seem as though we glided through the room and into the garden, following a path lined with purple flowers and warmed with the soft golden light of an early summer morning. Beyond the garden, the land fell away, revealing a pastoral landscape. As someone who often wishes I could see the ruins as they once were, standing and intact, I found the VR presentation exciting, wondrous, and far too short. It left me wanting a VR presentation of the entire building!

When the VR view dimmed to black, we put them back in the boxes and followed the guide back through the shadowy corridors. She led us to the Octagonal Room, the domed dining room that once had a rotating ceiling made of wood inside the concrete dome. The mechanism to make it turn has been found in the walls. An oculus (round hole) at the dome’s center normally would let in daylight, but now it’s covered.

In Nero’s time, this room was the most opulent of the Domus Aurea, decorated with glass mosaics on the dome and marble, stucco relief figures, and frescos on the walls. Today, it’s all gray concrete and brick. But it is still used — rows of plastic chairs filled the floor and lighting equipment stood around the edges.

Our tour complete, my group followed the guide back to the entrance, up the ramps and out of the buildings of the past. Outside, we squinted in the sudden sunlight. Traffic horns blared. Kids shouted and played nearby in the park. Behind the trees, the arches of the Colosseum rose toward a cloudless blue sky.

For a moment, it was disorienting to be back in the modern world. The VR experience, short though it was, had helped me imagine the ruined halls and corridors in all their former grandeur. It made the past feel real in a way that bare brick and fading frescoes cannot, no matter the guide’s skill. It’s as close to time travel as we’re likely to get — and I can’t wait to book my next trip.