DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42778#0224
134 THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT ROME.
This palace, which was in two storeys, has also been rediscovered
in recent years—for it was in part known in the early eighteenth
century,1 and the ceiling paintings of two of its rooms, known as
the Baths of Livia, were the subject of frequent drawings, the best,
perhaps, of which are to be found in the breakfast room of Sir John
Soane’s Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; while another room,
beautifully decorated with fountains and pergolas supported by
small marble columns, was known to Breval, who travelled in Italy
in 1721.2 More paintings of great beauty and delicacy of execution
have recently come to light; while on the upper floor, a pavement
of marble inlay has lately been found, which is the finest specimen
of its kind which has come down to us.
The second of these palaces appears to have been destroyed in
the fire of Nero (64 A.D.). After the fire, whatever be the exact
degree of his responsibility for it, he at all events took advantage
of it to build for himself an enormous palace, the so-called Golden
House, the area of which, including the park in which it stood,
has been calculated to have been greater than that of S. Peter’s
and the Vatican with its garden. He constructed a monumental
approach to it from the Forum—a colonnade3, starting at the
temple of Vesta and leading right up to the ridge of the Velia, where
the vestibule was situated.
On the Palatine he had but little time to restore the palaces of his
predecessors ; but some concrete foundations under the triclinium
of the Flavian Palace may be attributed to him. After the accession
of Vespasian, the site of the Golden House was gradually restored
to the Roman people, and Domitian employed his architect Rabirius
to restore the imperial palaces on the Palatine; that of Tiberius
having probably been destroyed by the fire of Titus in 80 a.d.
As had been the case under Tiberius, the approach from the Forum
was on the north of the hill, close to the temple of Castor and
Pollux. Three great halls were constructed, one of them the build-
ing which has till recently been known as the temple of Augustus,
and the other two (under which the piscina of Caligula has been
found) converted in the sixth century into the church of S. Maria
Antiqua. Behind the latter four inclined planes (perhaps, however,
due to Hadrian) ascended to the Clivus Victorise immediately
1 Papers of the British School at Rome, vii, 36, 60.
2 Engravings by E. Kirkall separately, and in Breval’s Remarks on several
parts of Europe.
3 Little more than the foundations of it exists.
This palace, which was in two storeys, has also been rediscovered
in recent years—for it was in part known in the early eighteenth
century,1 and the ceiling paintings of two of its rooms, known as
the Baths of Livia, were the subject of frequent drawings, the best,
perhaps, of which are to be found in the breakfast room of Sir John
Soane’s Museum, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; while another room,
beautifully decorated with fountains and pergolas supported by
small marble columns, was known to Breval, who travelled in Italy
in 1721.2 More paintings of great beauty and delicacy of execution
have recently come to light; while on the upper floor, a pavement
of marble inlay has lately been found, which is the finest specimen
of its kind which has come down to us.
The second of these palaces appears to have been destroyed in
the fire of Nero (64 A.D.). After the fire, whatever be the exact
degree of his responsibility for it, he at all events took advantage
of it to build for himself an enormous palace, the so-called Golden
House, the area of which, including the park in which it stood,
has been calculated to have been greater than that of S. Peter’s
and the Vatican with its garden. He constructed a monumental
approach to it from the Forum—a colonnade3, starting at the
temple of Vesta and leading right up to the ridge of the Velia, where
the vestibule was situated.
On the Palatine he had but little time to restore the palaces of his
predecessors ; but some concrete foundations under the triclinium
of the Flavian Palace may be attributed to him. After the accession
of Vespasian, the site of the Golden House was gradually restored
to the Roman people, and Domitian employed his architect Rabirius
to restore the imperial palaces on the Palatine; that of Tiberius
having probably been destroyed by the fire of Titus in 80 a.d.
As had been the case under Tiberius, the approach from the Forum
was on the north of the hill, close to the temple of Castor and
Pollux. Three great halls were constructed, one of them the build-
ing which has till recently been known as the temple of Augustus,
and the other two (under which the piscina of Caligula has been
found) converted in the sixth century into the church of S. Maria
Antiqua. Behind the latter four inclined planes (perhaps, however,
due to Hadrian) ascended to the Clivus Victorise immediately
1 Papers of the British School at Rome, vii, 36, 60.
2 Engravings by E. Kirkall separately, and in Breval’s Remarks on several
parts of Europe.
3 Little more than the foundations of it exists.