DOMUS AUREA
Built for Nero (54/68) after the fire of 64 by Severus and Celer and adorned with paintings by Fabullus
About 260 hectares (about one square mile)
The only remaining pavilion - 300 x 190 m (1,000 feet x 630) - continued to be occupied until a fire destroyed it in 104 AD. It was then inserted in the foundations of the Baths of Trajan, which kept it preserved underground
Until now 150 rooms have been excavated, 30 of which could be visited until the recent closure
It was inserted in 1932 in PARK OF OPPIAN HILL made by Raffaele De Vico (1881/1969)
"Definitive statement of the new style of painting already begun in the Flavian period, the so-called IV style: inspired by the criteria of stage sets, it scans with thin walls and complex architecture open to illusory prospective backgrounds and enriched by a large repertoire of fantastic decorative elements, checkered landscape, textile motifs" (Simona Fortunelli - TMG)
"It addresses the various models and traditions, whose contrast is indeed one of the characteristics of the IV style. In its qualitatively better, or at least richer, expressions everything is held together by an abundance of small and almost redundant various decorative elements, according to a clear sense of horror vacui (fear of emptiness), which gives a decidedly baroque look to the whole" (Gian Luca Grassigli - TMG)
It is divided into two parts:
1) TO THE WEST
It circles around a large courtyard oriented north-south, perhaps Domus Transitoria, the previous residence of Nero:
GARDEN WITH PORCH
NYMPHAEUM with mosaic "Ulysses offers wine to Polyphemus"
HALL OF THE LITTLE HOWLS VAULT probably triclinium (dining room) beautifully decorated with ceiling fresco friezes around a central motif inspired by the Hellenistic painted curtains
On the right ROOM OF THE BLACK VAULT
Under the group of rooms to the south of the grotto, excavations have revealed the presence of REPUBLICAN HOUSES of the second century BC with remains of mosaic floors and paintings of the so-called First Style
2) TO THE EAST
Rooms arranged around a large irregular polygonal recess followed by a sector in a radial pattern around an octagonal hall, certainly added later, and costituting probably the actual Domus Aurea:
ROOM OF THE GOLDEN VAULT
CRYPTOPORTICUS
CTAGONAL ROOM
ROOM OF ACHILLES IN SCIRO with painted lunette "Achilles with women's clothes unmasked by Ulysses"
When a young Roman fell by chance into a slot on the side of the Oppian Hill at the end of the 1400s, he found himself in a strange cave, filled with painted figures. Soon the young Roman artists began to go in to see for themselves
The frescoes then discovered faded later to pale gray stains on the plaster, but the effect of these "grotesque" (from the Italian word "grotto" which means cave) decorations, in fact, was thrilling for the entire Renaissance period
When Pinturicchio, Raphael and Michelangelo went down under the ground in order to study these images, they had a revelation of what was the real ancient world. They, and other artists, like Marco Palmezzano, who worked in Rome in those years, began to spread throughout the rest of Italy such "grotesque" style
Besides the signatures of famous visitors and later engraved on the frescoes, such as those of Giacomo Casanova and the Marquis de Sade, a few inches away from each other, it is possible to read the names of great painters such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Martin van Heemskerck and Filippino Lippi
ORATORY OF St. FELICITA
Retrieved from one of the service areas that were not involved in the Trajan construction and later were used as dwellings
There are graffiti and paintings almost completely disappeared dating back from the I/II to the V century AD
