Rome: Nero, the Emperor Who Burned in Memory

You are on the Oppian Hill, by the entrance to the Domus Aurea, Nero's Golden House. What you see on the surface is a park with trees. What lies below is one of the most extravagant palaces in history. Nero built it after the great fire of 64. It covered a huge area of central Rome, with gardens, vineyards, woods and an artificial lake. The walls were covered in gold, precious stones and mother-of-pearl. In one dining room, ivory ceilings slid open and showered flower petals and perfume on the guests. According to the historian Suetonius, when Nero moved in he said: at last I can begin to l…

You are facing the Colosseum. But picture this spot sixty years before it existed. There was water here. It was the private lake of Nero's Golden House. When Nero died, the new emperor, Vespasian, did something very shrewd. He drained the lake and built an amphitheater for the people on top of it. The message was clear: what Nero had kept for himself belonged to everyone again. The name we use today, Colosseum, does not come from the building. It comes from a statue. Nero had a giant bronze statue of himself cast, more than thirty meters tall, for the entrance to his palace. It was called t…

You are facing the Arch of Titus, at the top of the Via Sacra. Walk underneath and look at the relief on the left: Roman soldiers carrying a great seven-branched candelabrum, the menorah from the Temple in Jerusalem. This arch celebrates a war that began in Nero's time. In 66, the Jews of Judea rebelled against Rome. Nero sent a veteran general of modest origins to crush the revolt. His name was Vespasian. While Vespasian fought in Judea, Nero fell. Rome plunged into civil war: four emperors in a single year. Vespasian came back and took the throne. His son Titus finished the war. In 70 he…

You are facing the Temple of Vesta, a small round building with columns. Beside it, a rectangular courtyard with statues of women: the House of the Vestals. Inside this temple burned a fire that must never go out. It was tended by the Vestals, priestesses who lived here. If the fire died, it was a sign of disaster for Rome. In July 64, Vesta's fire did not go out. What happened was worse: the temple itself burned. The historian Tacitus, writing a few decades later, lists the buildings destroyed in the great fire. Among them, this temple, along with the protective gods of Rome it housed. Th…

You are in the Palatine cryptoporticus, a long, half-buried vaulted corridor. See how light slips in through small high windows. Nero had it built to move between the palaces on the hill unseen. Nero came to the throne in 54, aged sixteen. His mother, Agrippina, had groomed him for it since childhood. She had married the emperor Claudius, her own uncle. Claudius died suddenly after eating a dish of mushrooms. Almost all ancient writers say Agrippina poisoned him so her son could rule. In the early years Nero governed well, guided by his mother and the philosopher Seneca. But Agrippina wante…

You are facing the Circus Maximus. Today it is a long grassy valley where people jog and walk their dogs. It was Rome's biggest stadium: about two hundred and fifty thousand people came to watch the chariot races. All around were wooden shops, food stalls, stores of oil and cloth. All highly flammable. On the night of 18 to 19 July 64, the fire started in those shops, at the end facing the Palatine. The wind drove it on. It burned for six days straight, and then flared up again. Of Rome's fourteen districts, three were completely destroyed and seven badly damaged. Thousands of people were l…

You are on Via di Grotta Pinta, near Campo de' Fiori. Look at how the houses form a perfect curve. It is no accident: they are built on the seating of the Theater of Pompey, Rome's first great stone theater. Nero loved theater, music, poetry and chariot racing. Not as a spectator. As the star. He performed in public, singing with the cithara, in competitions. For a Roman emperor, that was a scandal. Actors were considered people of low standing. According to Suetonius, while Nero sang, no one was allowed to leave the theater. Women gave birth in the stands. Men pretended to be dead so they …

You are on the square of the Pantheon. Look at the portico of giant granite columns. Notice those on the left side: some are a different color. In the seventeenth century, Pope Alexander VII restored that side of the portico. To replace damaged columns he used other granite ones found very near here. They came from the Baths of Nero. Nero built these public baths around 62, a few steps from where you stand. They were huge and luxurious, with hot water, pools and exercise halls. Open to everyone. A Roman poet, Martial, wrote a famous line about them. It said, roughly: what is worse than Nero…

You are beside the Tiber, near the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II. Look at the water a little downstream. When the level is low, some ancient stone bases break the surface. They are the remains of the Pons Neronianus, Nero's bridge. This bridge crossed the river to the Vatican plain. On the other side lay the imperial gardens and a private circus, built by Caligula and used by Nero for his chariot races. After the fire, people kept blaming the emperor. Nero needed a culprit. He found one in a small, new and disliked group: the Christians. A sect that came from Judea and refused to worship the g…

You are in St Peter's Square. Look at the Egyptian obelisk in the center, some twenty-five meters tall, without hieroglyphs. It is the only piece of this square that was already here in Nero's time. Emperor Caligula brought it from Egypt to decorate the center of his circus, the same one Nero later used. It stood a few meters from here, beside the present basilica. In 1586 it was moved into this square. If the accounts are true, this obelisk watched the Christians of Rome die in 64. According to tradition, one of them was Peter, the fisherman from Galilee, the disciple of Jesus. He was cruc…

You are facing the Mausoleum of Augustus, a huge circular brick structure planted with cypresses. It was the tomb of the first emperor's family. The Julio-Claudians, Nero's dynasty, rested here. Nero was the last of that family. But he is not here. In 68, the provinces rebelled. A governor in Hispania, Galba, declared himself emperor. The army abandoned Nero. The Senate declared him a public enemy. Nero fled Rome by night, in disguise, to a villa outside the city lent to him by one of his freedmen. He heard the horsemen coming to arrest him. He knew the punishment: he would be flogged to de…

You are in Piazza del Popolo, facing the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, beside the city's northern gate. Behind it rises the Pincian Hill. According to tradition, the tomb of Nero's family stood around here. This is where he was buried. And here the last part of his story begins. For years, someone left fresh flowers on his grave. Suetonius reports it with surprise. Many ordinary people missed him. Before long, false Neros appeared. Men who claimed to be the emperor, who had not died and was coming back. At least three in twenty years. Some gathered followers. The Christians, by contras…