Welcome to the ultimate gated community in the world.
Hard to believe that Rome was founded in 753 BC by Romulus, one of the twins suckled by the she wolf, harder still to believe that the lupercal where these boys lived and the first huts have been found near the house of Augustus and Livia.....the original eternal city.
[ picture from wikipedia ]
The Lupercal Grotto, a nyphaeum under the house of Livia was believed to be the cave where the she wolf cared for Romulus and Remus however a more likely explanation is that it is part of Nero's palace.
It is said that Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble....it is now again a city of brick, but what great bricks they are.
Augustus chose this site as his home exactly because of it's association with the founder and the gods. Layers upon layers of building over the years cover the site, the most dazzling must have been Nero's Domus Aurea which stood on the entire site.
The private stadium of Domitian
They only had to build the one curved wall at the end as the rest of the structure is tucked into the hill.
The model below shows what this enormous complex of villas looked like. The picture above can be seen on the upper left of the model. The two smaller 'house' shaped buildings are the house of Livia [closer to us] and the House of Augustus, which is open at very odd times and with no real schedule.
The large building in the lower portion was the Flavian Villa, again understand that most of the rooms are actually underground.
The view from the edge of the House of Augustus
The ancient garden of Tiberius
The garden is on the roof of rooms which would have been part of the villa. You can look down to the floor as there is no longer a roof. You can see how the Romans built into the sides of their hills allowing for very high buildings. It's a long way down.
There are remnants of stucco decoration in the Nerocrytologgia which connected the House and Garden of Tiberius to the Domus Aurea
Below is part of the tunnel open to the public. There are many tributaries all closed.
Sadly the Domus Aurea is also closed due to subsidence. There are still numerous rooms with painted decoration by Nero's painter, Fabullus. As an aside, I am certain that his name is the actual derivation of our word, fabulous [ he also painted 'fables, that Fabulus' did]. Imagine people walking around in wonder at the fabulous artwork....asking: Mr Nero, who is your painter....the answer: Oh it's Fabullus.......and there you have it....after a few weeks it seems there was Fabullus' fabulous work everywhere.......
300 rooms, no bedrooms, no kitchens and no latrines have yet been found, the Golden House was a party place as Nero lived in the Quirinal.
The celebrated fresco of Achilles by Fabulus
[ pictures of the Domus Aurea from Tickitly.com]
Michelangelo and Raphael were greatly influenced by his work, shown above, since it was found in underground grottoes [ The Domus Aurea was an embarrassment to subsequent emperors and was destroyed within 10 years after Nero's suicide in 68 AD, the rooms filled in with dirt and the Temple of Rome built on the site], the work was called grotesque....and is indeed fabulous...isn't it?
It's a funny thing, Rome is hot, it boils in the summer, so many of these palaces had large temple like structures above ground, but the living spaces were carved into the hills and are in effect nothing more than glorified underground caves, cool as can be.....they had a natural form of air conditioning as these spaces are very cool, some bordering on damp.
This is a new excavation. It's hard to see but there is a large circular room that has a revolving floor. They believe this to be Nero's Dining Room which was said to revolve around painted constellations.
Below is a video of Nero's House when it was open to the public.
A semi circular fountain with winged sphinxes, you have to remember that all of these surfaces would have been clad in colored marble or shells or painted stucco, so what we are looking at are the ruins of foundations.
There are some modest buildings that have been turned into churches and convents on the site.
This is the view from what would have been the Domus Aurea to Nero's pool, now the Flavian Amphitheater, the Colosseum, so called because of the enormous Colossus of Nero which stood nearby. There was a fire the day I was there.......that is after all how Nero was able to build his house here.....the fire of Rome.
Below is a great reconstruction of the palace which will give you a better idea of how this complex evolved.
A fun piece of info: St Valentines Day falls on the Roman feast of Lupercallia, Feb 15th...the Christians had to change it a bit, so instead of a sexual feast, they turned it into a non-requited love fest and changed the date to the 14th. The original, held on the Palatine, involved a lottery card with the names of eligible young ladies that were drawn by eligible young men....they were then expected to be paired,but for just the year and to live as couples....an early matchmaking scheme...you continued this until you were married off.
No comments:
Post a Comment