Legend has it that Nero famously fiddled while Rome burned. Fancying himself a great actor and poet, he played, as it turns out, his harp to accompany his recital of "The Destruction of Troy" while gazing at the flames of Rome's catastrophic fire of AD 64. Anti-Neronian historians propagandized that Nero, in fact, had set the Great Fire to clear out a vast tract of the city center to build his new palace. Today's historians discount this as historical folderol (going so far as to point to the fact that there was a full moon on the evening of July 19th, hardly the propitious occasion to commit arson). But legend or not, Nero did get to build his new palace, the extravagant Domus Aurea (Golden House). The fire was so devastating an entire ridge of the Esquiline Hill was cleared, which the capricious emperor quickly confiscated, drawing the animosity of most of his subjects. The new palace was huge and sumptuous, with a facade of pure gold, seawater piped into the baths, decorations of mother-of-pearl, fretted ivory and other precious materials, and vast gardens. It was said that after completing this gigantic house Nero exclaimed "Now I can live like a human being!" Lovers of all things Greek, happiest when he could devote himself to the arts, Nero has come down to us as a monster, but that image was created by hostile historians of his age, like Suetonius and Tacitus. Today, scholars draw a more balanced picture.

Not much has survived of Nero's palace; a good portion of the buildings and grounds was buried under the public works with which subsequent emperors sought to make reparation to the Roman people for Nero's phenomenal greed. The largest of the buildings put up by later emperors over the Domus Aurea was the great complex of baths built by Trajan. As a result, the site of the Domus Aurea itself remained unknown for many centuries until they were rediscovered during the Renaissance era. In 1998 the city of Rome mounted a massive restoration of the archaeological site. Unfortunately, all of the fabulous decors designed by Fabullus have vanished but you can still be awed by the famous Octagon Room, topped by an oculus, where Nero once displayed the famous Greek statues of the Dying Gaul and the Dying Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife (now on view at Rome's Palazzo Altemps museum). Elsewhere are soaring vaults covered with faded remnants of Pompeiian-style frescoes, some of which came to inspire Raphael, who later used these models -- known as grotesques because they were found in the so-called ruined grottoes of the palace -- in his decorative motifs for the Vatican Loggia. Keep in mind that the temperature underground is about 50°F all year round. Reservations are strongly recommended.