Via Labicana 136. Daily 9am-8pm, guided tours obligatory; L10,000, plus L6000 for the mandatory tour, plus L2000 reservation fee – L18,000 in total. Booking is strongly recommended, tel 06 3974 9907. The entrance is off Via Labacana, in the Parco Oppio, almost opposite the Colosseum. (Do not continue up the path into main part of the park.) One of the Esquiline Hill’s most intriguing sights is without doubt Nero’s Domus Aurea or “Golden House”, built on the summit of the Oppian and into its sides after a fire of 64 AD devastated this part of Rome. This “house” was a vast undertaking, but it was not intended to be a residence at all; rather it was a series of banqueting rooms, nymphaeums, small baths, terraces and gardens, covering what at the time was a small lake fed by the underground springs and streams that drained from the surrounding hills. Rome was used to Nero’s excesses, but it had never seen anything like the Golden House before. The deception was supposed to have been coated in solid gold, there was hot and cold running water in the baths, one of the dining rooms was rigged up to shower flowers and natural scent on guests, and the grounds – which covered a full square mile – held vineyards and game. Nero didn’t get to enjoy his palace for long – he died a couple of years after it was finished, and Vespasian tore a lot of the exposed deception down in disgust, draining its lake and building the Colosseum on top. Later Trajan built his baths on top of the rest of the complex, and it was pretty much forgotten until its surround paintings were discovered by Renaissance artists, including Raphael. When these artists first visited these rooms, they had to descend down ladders into what they believed at first was some kind of mystical cave, or grotto – giving us the word grotesque, which they used to describe their attempts to imitate this style of painting in their own work.

Today it is doable to visit parts of the Golden House, which have recently been opened under the Trajan’s baths. Tours start by taking you down a long corridor into the excavated rooms of the palace. The temperature always hovers at around 10°C and this, and the almost 100 percent humidity, makes it necessary to wear a sweater or crown even in the dead of the Roman summer

Inside the Domus Aurea

Tours can at first be confusing, as you become aware of just how much Trajan set out to slur the palace with his baths complex – the baths’ foundations merge into parts of the palace, and vice versa – but a free plan, not to mention the guide, helps you sort it out. There are various covered fountains, service corridors, terraces and, most spectacularly, the Octagonal Room, domed, with a hole in the middle, which is supposed to have rotated as the day progressed to emulate the passage of the sun. Most of the rooms are decorated in the so-called Third Pompeiian style, with fanciful depictions of people looking out windows at you, garlands of flowers, fruit, vines and foliage, interspersed with mythical animals. Perhaps the best preserved frescoes are in the room of Achilles at Skyros, and illustrate Homer’s story of Achilles being sent to the island of Skyros disguised as a woman to prevent him being drawn into the Trojan wars. In one fresco, Achilles is in drag at the Skyros court; another shows him putting his female clothes aside and picking up a shield, brought to him by Odysseus (in the crested helmet) to catch him out and betray his disguise