Rome blog for Bed & Breakfast Chaplin Hostel

The ruins of Nero’s Domus Aurea, which has been closed since December 2005, will reopen to the public on February 4th, 2007. Tours will be accompanied by an engineer and an architect. They will cost 4.50€.

The “Golden House”, which was closed when the 32 rooms open to the public were declared unsafe after patches of brick and plaster had started showing signs of detaching, had only reopened in June 1999 after having been closed to anyone but art officials for 21 years. The cost of the restoration was an impressive 5 billion liras (2.5 Million Euros).
The Domus Aurea lies underneath the Colle Oppio (Oppian Hill), which is covered with parks, roads and trees.

After the Emperor Nero’s suicide in 68 AD his successor Trajan, in order to make all traces of Nero disappear, had his baths built on top of the Golden Palace, just as he had the Flavian amphitheater (or Colosseum) built on top of the lake that used to be beside the palace. Funnily enough, it was the burial of the palace that preserved the vivid colors and images of its frescoes (the word ‘grotesque’, from the Italian word for cave (grotto), was coined after the winged lions, griffins and tritons depictred in the Domus Aurea).

From an architectural point of view, the most important room is the eight-sided Sala Ottagonale with its rotating floor where Nero is said to have entertained his guests by playing the lyre. At the height of festivities Nero used to order marble panels to be slid back, thereby showering the proceedings with petals and perfume.

The chalk and tallow marks on the walls were left by Renaissance masters like Raphael who were let down through a hole in the roof to admire its splendours.

The Domus Aurea, after Nero had finished building it, boasted 150 rooms which covered most of the Palatine, Celian and Oppian hills (more than 50 hectars).

At the moment archeologists are trying to unearth more of the baths Emperor Trajan had built over the Domus Aurea.

From the Rome Hostel Chaplin Bed and Breakfast the Domus Aurea can be reached by taking a metro (line B) from Rome Termini to the  Colosseo stop. Turn left upon exiting from the metro system, walk past the Colosseum and turn left onto the Viale Domus Aurea. From the Chaplin’s sister B&B, the Rome Hotel Little Italy, you turn right when you walk out the door, left at the end of the street and then straight ahead till you find the Viale Domus Aurea on your right.