Rome was the official site of the emperor's residence, and various emperors emphatically left their mark on the city and its buildings. The most obvious structures that resulted from the emperor's presence were the imperial palaces. During the republic, one of the most desirable addresses for upper-class Romans was the Palatine hill. During the first century of the empire, the dwelling of the emperors was situated on this hill and gradually expanded until it covered nearly the entire surface of the Palatine.
This process began with the first emperor, Augustus. At the time he became emperor, he was living in a modest house on the Palatine, which had previously been owned by the eminent orator Hortensius. This was supposedly a smallish house with unusually plain decor. Augustus continued to live in these simple surroundings as part of a concerted propaganda effort to portray himself as just another Roman citizen. He also made a point of dressing in unostentatious clothing. There were elements of the house that belied this interpretation, however; part of the property was used to build a temple to Apollo, and a crown was placed by order of the senate over the doorway of the house, with laurel trees (symbols of Apollo) flanking the entrance.
The next emperor, Tiberius, seems to have built a substantial palace on the northern side of the Palatine, which looked down into the Roman Forum. The details of the Tiberian structure are ill understood, as his palace was absorbed into later rebuildings, but it seems to have covered a fairly large area. Subsequent emperors continued to expand the rooms, reception halls, and dining rooms that constituted the imperial palace, and gradually this sprawling complex displaced the remaining private homes atop the Palatine.
Most of the extant ruins visible today on the Palatine are remnants of the version of the palace built by the emperor Domitian near the end of the first century ad. This structure, which was designed by the architect Rabir-ius, featured several distinct wings on different levels. These included numerous clusters of rooms around luxurious courtyards, grand reception halls, balconies for public appearances, private apartments, banquet halls, fountains, and gardens. Many of the rooms and spaces had a fanciful character, with irregular shapes, octagonal courtyards, and a sunken garden in the form of a hippodrome (an arena for horse racing). The rooms employed a large variety of concrete vaults in different shapes. At the back of the hill, the palace complex overlooked the Circus Maximus, the primary venue for the popular chariot races. Part of the palace may have comprised a sort of imperial box from which the emperor could observe the races and appear before the cheering throngs gathered in the Circus Maximus, all without ever really having to leave his home.
While the palace on the Palatine was the primary residence of most of the emperors, the most famous and notorious imperial dwelling was the Domus Aurea, or "Golden House," constructed by the emperor Nero. The Great Fire of ad 64 devastated 10 of the 14 regions of Rome, and Nero took advantage of some of the space cleared by the fire to construct an extravagant new palace, which stretched from the Palatine to the Esquiline. There were rumors that Nero had started the fire deliberately to make room for his grand project.
At the time of Nero's death, construction had not yet finished, but the parts already completed were impressive enough. These included a triple colonnade that extended for an entire mile, an artificial lake in the valley where the Flavian Amphitheater would later be built, elaborate pavilions and gardens stocked with a variety of exotic wild animals, and a huge complex of over 140 rooms to be used for hosting feasts and dinner parties. At the dedication of this extraordinary set of structures, Nero's comment was, "Finally I can begin to live like a human being" (Suetonius, Life of Nero 31).
Part of the dining block survives and nicely illustrates the extravagance of this project. It includes several courtyards, each surrounded by no fewer than 50 dining rooms, where Nero could play host to gigantic feasts. Other dining rooms featured fountains in the ceilings and walls that could pour water down between the guests. One principal dining room was said to have a revolving rotunda, and a number of dining rooms were equipped with panels in the ceiling that could be opened, allowing flowers and perfumes to drift down upon the guests. One of the most dramatic
Figure 11.1 Reconstruction of the interior of the emperors' palace on the Palatine hill. While the details are speculative, this drawing conveys an impression of the sumptuousness of the decor. (From G. Gatteschi, Restauri delia Roma Imperiale, 1924, p. 41.)
Rooms located at the center of the structure is an octagonal dining court with an och/ks in the middle of the roof. Opening onto this octagonal space were a number of dining rooms with waterfalls flowing down one side of their walls. The entire surface of the walls and ceilings of this wing was covered with fine decorative marbles and lavish wall paintings.
The crowning touch to the whole complex was placed on the hill above it, where Nero constructed a gigantic, 40-meter-tall bronze statue of himself in the nude. This statue, known as the Colossus of Nero, was an appropriate symbol of Nero's egomania. After his death and the condemnation of his memory, it was obviously awkward to have such an enormous reminder of such a reviled figure. The solution that was settled upon was to alter the head of the Colossus, changing the features and adding rays projecting out of the head so that it was transformed into a statue of Sol, the god of the sun. Later, the emperor Hadrian had the statue moved to a new position next to the Flavian Amphitheater to make room for a new temple he wished to build. This relocation was a formidable engineering challenge, and the statue was reportedly transported in an upright position using the muscle power of 24 elephants.
This statue's strange odyssey did not end there, however, since the emperor Commodus once again removed the head and substituted a new one to aggrandize himself. Commodus had an obsession with the mythical hero Hercules and liked to dress up in a lion skin and carry a club to Emulate his role model. Therefore, he had a new head with his own features placed on the Colossus and added the attributes of Hercules. Upon Commodus's death, the statue was reworked yet again to restore it as a statue of Sol. The Colossus seems to have survived until at least the fourth century ad, though it was torn down at some point later during the Middle Ages. Its memory was preserved, however, since the adjacent Flavian Amphitheater became popularly known as the Colosseum some time around the year 1000, a nickname that it still retains today. By the midsecond century ad, the Golden House had been abandoned by the emperors and was buried under later structures, such as the Baths of Trajan.
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