The Domus Aurea “Golden House” was a large landscaped portico villa built by the Emperor Nero in the heart of ancient Rome, after the great fire in 64 AD had cleared away the aristocratic dwellings on the slopes of the Palatine Hill.

The palace was full of architectural invention, a more splendid palace than had ever been seen before. However, Nero’s successors attempted to raze all trace of his megalomania. Vespasian drained Nero’s ornamental lake and, in a symbolic gesture, built the Colosseum in its place. Domitian built a palace on the Palatino, while Trajan sacked and destroyed the 1st floor and then entombed the lower level in earth and used it for the foundations of his public baths complex, which was abandoned by the 6th century. This burial of the palace preserved it; the section that has been excavated lies beneath Oppian Hill.

During the Renaissance, artists (including Raphael and Pinturecchio) lowered themselves into the ruins, climbing across the top of Trajan’s rubble in order to study the frescoed grottoes, and Raphael reproduced some of their motifs in his work on the Vatican.