This is more an illustrated podcast (or a narrated selection of photographs) because there were just too many good images to choose from.
In his life of Nero Suetonius tells us:
“There was nothing however in which [Nero] was more ruinously prodigal than in building. He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage [Domus Transitoria], but when it was burned shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House [Domus Aurea].”
One of the more unlikely heirs of Nero’s Golden House. Phone box in my London neighbourhood. Clerkenwell Green, 13 February 2023.
The vast palace complex of the Domus Aurea was the work, according to Pliny, of the architects Severus and Celer and made use of land cleared by the great fire of 64 CE (the one in which Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned). It occupied all or part of three of the seven hills of Rome.
Agrippina and Nero nose to nose, indicative of his mother’s role as his Empress. (photo: Wikipedia commons)
Plan of the Colle Oppio pavilion of the Domus Aurea. The pinkish lines are the supporting substructures of the Baths of Trajan which were built above.
Trajan subsequently obliterated all memory of Nero, and used the pavilion on the Colle Oppio as ready-made foundations for his new public bath complex.
Nero’s Golden House. July 2021.
Cryptoporticus, Domus Aurea, September 2021.
Imagined reconstruction of the view from the fountain hall/nymphaeum (marked “ninfeo” on the plan, it’s on the right of the left-hand wing) through room 44 to the large courtyard on the top left-hand of the plan.
Detail, hexagonal courtyard, Domus Aurea, July 2021.
The room of Achilles on Skyros
The Octagonal Hall, complete with the Farnese Hercules during a private visit in September 2021. The statue was part of a temporary exhibition which also projected the constellations onto the concrete vault in a charming bit of kitsch.
In the late fifteenth century artists began to explore the “grottoes” below the Baths of Trajan, and emulate the decorations they found. The results can be found all over Italy, but also from Mexico to London and most places in between.
Nero’s Golden House, July 2021. The holes through which artists in the late fifteenth century lowered themselves into the “grottoes” to study the paintings and stuccoes. The shallow truncated curves at the bottom centre of the photograph would inspire Sir John Soane, and ultimately provide the characteristic roof of the K2 phone box.
Breakfast Room, Sir John Soane’s House, Lincoln’s Inn Fields and those shallow curves of the vault. Photo credit: Sir John Soane’s House Facebook page. (Though I have been more times than I can count, I clearly haven’t been since my phone took good pictures).
Pinturicchio at the Borgia Apartments, Vatican Museums. These pilasters painted with grotteschi were uncovered during restoration work on the rooms which was only completed in 2021.
Sixteenth century grotteschi at Villa d’Este, Tivoli. 27 April 2023.
Grotteschi americani, San Miguel, Ixmaquilpàn, Mexico. Photo credit: Wikipedia
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