Entries with Achilles tag

Domus Aurea

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

Category: Rome

Museo Archeologico Nazionale

Naples isn’t really a city of museums – there’s more on the streets that’s worth perceptive on the whole, and most displays of interest are kept in situ in churches, palaces and the like. However, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Mon & Wed-Sun 9am-7.30pm; L12,000/¬6.20; reachable direct by bus #110 from Piazza Garibaldi) is an exception, home to the Farnese collection of antiquities from Lazio and Campania and the best of the finds from the nearby Roman sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Currently the museum is undergoing a comprehensive restoration, and there’s a good chance you won’t be healthy to see it all. However, the most impressive sections are usually open, and you’d be angry to miss them, especially as they illuminate and enhance visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum. The ground floor of the museum concentrates on sculpture from the Farnese collection , displayed at its best in the mighty Great Hall, which holds imperial-era figures like the Farnese Bull and Farnese Hercules from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome – the former the largest piece of classical sculpture ever found. The mezzanine floor holds the museum’s collection of mosaics – remarkably preserved works all, giving a superb insight into ordinary Roman customs, beliefs and humour. All are worth looking at – images of fish, crustacea, wildlife on the banks of the Nile, a cheeky cat and quail with still-life beneath, masks and simple nonfigurative decoration. But some highlights to look out for include a realistic Battle Scene (no. 10020), the Three Musicians with Dwarf (no. 9985), an urbane meeting of the Platonic Academy (no. 124545), and a marvellously captured scene from a comedy The Consultation of the Fattucchiera (no. 9987), with a soothsayer giving a dour and doomy prediction.

At the far end of the mezzanine is the fascinating Gabinetto Segreto (Secret Room), which reopened in 2000 after nearly thirty years. The room contains erotic material taken from the brothels, baths, houses and taverns of Pompeii and Herculaneum – to see the display, which lurks tantalizingly behind a partition, you need to obtain a timed ticket (no extra charge) from the entrance hall. The objects in the collection weren’t always segregated in this way; it was the shocked Duke of Calabria who, having taken his wife and daughter to view the museum, decided that the offending objects should be removed from the gaze of ladies. From then until the time of Garibaldi they were kept under lock and key, disappearing again from public view in the twentieth century for long periods. The artefacts, from languidly sensual wall-paintings to preposterously phallic lamps, bear testimony to Roman licentiousness, although the phallus was often used as a kind of lucky charm rather than as a sexual symbol – cheerfully hung outside taverns and bakeries to ward off the evil eye. Free English-language tours of the Gabinetto are admirably serious and smut-free, though it is hard to repress a giggle at the sculpture of a man whose toga is imperfectness to mask an erection, or at the graphic but elegantly executed marble of Pan “seducing” a goat.

Upstairs through the Salone della Meridiana, which holds a sparse but fine assortment of Roman figures (notably a wonderfully strained Atlas and some demure female figures – Roman replicas of Greek originals), a series of rooms holds the Campanian surround paintings , lifted from the villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and rich in colour and invention. There are plenty here, and it’s worth devoting some time to this section, which includes works from the Sacrarium – part of Pompeii’s Egyptian temple of Isis, the most celebrated mystery cult of antiquity – the discovery of which gave a major boost to Egyptomania at the end of the eighteenth century. In the next series of rooms, some of the smallest and most easily missed works are among the most exquisite. Among those to look out for are a paternal Achilles and Chirone (no. 9109); the Sacrifice of Iphiginia (no. 9112) in the next room, one of the best preserved of all the murals; the dignified Dido forsaken by Aeneas and the Personification of Africa (no. 8998); and the series of frescoes telling the story of the Trojan horse. Look out too for the group of four small pictures, the best of which is a depiction of a woman gathering flowers entitled Allegoria della Primavera – a fluid, impressionistic piece of work capturing both the gentleness of spring and the graceful beauty of the woman.

Beyond the murals are the actual finds from the Campanian cities – everyday items like glass, silver, ceramics, charred pieces of rope, even foodstuffs (petrified cakes, figs, fruit and nuts), together with a model layout of Pompeii in cork. On the other side of the first floor, there are finds from one particular house, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum – sculptures in bronze mainly. The Hermes at Rest in the centre of the second room is perhaps the most arresting item, rapt with exhaustion, but around are other adept statues – of athletes, suffused with movement, a languid Resting Satyr , the convincingly woozy Drunken Silenus , and, in the final room, portrait busts of soldiers and various local big cheeses.

Category: Naples