Archaeologists have opened what they describe as the largest known Roman wall mosaic to the public, almost 2,000 years after it was built into a gallery buried beneath Rome's Oppian Hill, near the Colosseum.
The artwork stands more than 32 feet (10 metres) tall and stretches 52 feet (16 metres) along the wall. Though sections have been lost to damage and time, enough survives to make out life-size figures reclining among painted pillars and columns, including a bearded philosopher, a centaur, and a young poet being crowned with laurel.
Antonio Plescia, curator of archaeology for the Capitoline Superintendency for Cultural Heritage, told the Daily Mail it was the largest Roman wall mosaic. He said it was valuable for its size, its artistic quality, and the interest of the subjects it depicts, since it might contain a rare image of Emperor Claudius's port near Rome.
A palace built after Rome's Great Fire
Experts believe the mosaic was made in the first century AD, near the height of the Roman Empire's power and wealth. It may have decorated a private home or formed part of the Domus Aurea, the vast palace complex built by the Emperor Nero.
The Domus Aurea rose on land cleared by the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, which destroyed nearly three-quarters of the city over nine days. Nero was frequently accused of starting the fire himself to make room for his palace, though modern experts consider this unlikely.
After Nero's death, the Domus Aurea was seen as an embarrassing reminder of his brief and brutal reign, and within a decade it had been stripped of its jewels, marble and ivory. The Emperor Trajan later chose the site for a 15-acre public bath complex, and by AD 109 the palace had been buried underground entirely. The foundations of Trajan's baths can still be seen poking through the ceiling of the subterranean gallery above the mosaic.
More of the mosaic still buried
Despite its scale, experts believe the mosaic is part of an even larger structure that has yet to be fully excavated. The Capitoline Superintendency for Cultural Heritage said archaeologists have found the remains of a covering of large marble slabs deeper beneath the mosaic, along with a seven-foot-tall (2.2-metre) niche decorated with marble.
That brings the estimated height of the wider complex to 39 feet (12 metres), suggesting there could be considerably more of the mosaic still to uncover.
The gallery, several metres beneath the ruins of the bath house and the Colosseum, is now open to tour groups for the first time. Rome's mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, told reporters as he inaugurated the site on Tuesday that the city was giving this unique wonder back to Rome.
The 'Painted City' fresco
The mosaic and its unidentified port city are not the only puzzle in the underground complex. The site also holds the so-called Painted City fresco, first unearthed by archaeologists in the 1990s.
The fresco depicts a coastal city with high walls, towers, gates, a theatre and statues, rendered in such fine detail that individual house windows are visible. Archaeologists are still unsure whether it shows a real city or an artistic fantasy, but the detail and expense involved suggest the scene held great importance for the Romans who commissioned it.
Who was Emperor Nero?
Nero is remembered as one of history's most notorious tyrants, a reputation shaped in part by his mother, Agrippina, whose first husband died of natural causes and whose second she is widely suspected of murdering. In AD 49 she married the Emperor Claudius, who already had a son, Britannicus, but she manipulated him into adopting Nero as his heir, then had Claudius killed with poisoned mushrooms so her son could inherit the empire in AD 54.
Nero was just 16 when he took power. The Roman historian Suetonius described him as of average height, with a prominent belly and a spotty complexion, writing that he never wore the same garment twice and never travelled with fewer than 1,000 carriages, their mules shod with silver.
Within six months of his reign, Nero had his 15-year-old stepbrother Britannicus poisoned over a suspected plot. He later had his mother stabbed to death in AD 59, divorced his wife Octavia on a false adultery charge before having her killed, and, according to the account, kicked his pregnant second wife Poppaea to death after she complained he had come home late from the races. He married a third time after forcing the husband of his intended bride to take his own life.
Nero's unpopularity grew after the Great Fire of AD 64, with taxes raised soon afterward to fund the Domus Aurea, or Golden House. The palace entrance was guarded by a 120-foot bronze statue of Nero, and its grounds included an amphitheatre, bath-houses and roaming exotic animals, along with a rotating dining room where Nero staged lavish feasts of peacock, swan and roasted dormice.
The Golden House was completed in AD 68, the same year Nero faced a revolt over high taxation and his spending. Declared a public enemy by the Senate, he was forced to take his own life, reportedly lamenting, "What an artist the world loses in me." The palace was later stripped of its treasures and buried, remaining hidden until the 15th century, when a local youth fell into its remains. Visitors who lowered themselves in on ropes to view its wall paintings included the artists Raphael and Michelangelo, who both carved their names into the walls.
