No modern scholar, and few ancient ones, believe he did, but you have to admit, the Domus Aurea seemed to give Nero a fairly good motive for arson.Īs the first-century Roman historian Suetonius describes it, the Domus Aurea was a home fit for a megalomaniac. It was one of the big reasons that the Roman public suspected Nero of setting the fire himself. The Domus Aurea, or Golden House, as the entire site was known, spread over almost 200 acres, covering the Palatine, Caelian and Esquiline hills of Rome. 64 to build a palace complex of staggering dimensions. The emperor Nero commandeered many of the neighborhoods razed by the Great Fire of A.D. Even before Covid-19, when the site was open to the public on weekends, few people came. I had an appointment to meet Alessandro D’Alessio, who oversees the excavation and restoration of what must surely have been, in its day, the world’s biggest royal palace. A cluster of nuns passed by, and one of them pointed me toward a poorly marked gate at the base of the hill-the entrance to the Domus Aurea, or what’s left of it, anyway.

There was almost no one here, aside from a few young mothers pushing strollers along the pathways. I could see the crowds converging on the magnificent first-century amphitheater as I headed across the street to a small park on a hillock. The Colosseum in Rome draws close to eight million tourists a year, making it one of the world’s most-visited archaeological attractions.

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