Why is the Domus Aurea underground?

Because Trajan’s baths were built directly on top of it. Nero began the palace after the great fire of Rome in July AD 64 and died in AD 68, leaving it unfinished. His successors set about erasing it: the lake in its grounds was drained and the Colosseum built on that spot, and the baths went up over the palace itself. Filling in and building over a structure is a thorough way to destroy it and an unintentionally excellent way to preserve it. The rooms you can visit under the Parco del Colle Oppio survived precisely because somebody wanted them gone.

Buried byTrajan’s baths

Also built over the groundsThe Colosseum, on the drained lake

Palace begunAfter the fire of July AD 64

Left unfinishedNero died in AD 68

Now underParco del Colle Oppio

ResultBuried, and therefore preserved

What burial did to the building

It kept it. Above ground, a first-century structure in the middle of Rome would have been quarried for its materials, rebuilt, rebuilt again and finally lost. Under a bath complex it was sealed. The trade is that what survives is the ground floor, in bare brick and concrete, with the marble, gold and ivory stripped before the burial rather than after — what is actually down there. It is also why the visit is cold, damp and helmeted: you are inside an excavation under a park, not a building with a front door.

How anyone found it again

Around the end of the fifteenth century people dropped through holes in the hillside into what they took for caves, and Renaissance artists went down to copy the paintings on the vaults. That is the whole origin of a word in English, and it is on the grotesque frescoes page. The full sequence of fire, building, burial and rediscovery is on the history page.

Check dates for a guided visit

Free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure on most tours — book now, decide later.

Frequently asked questions

Why is Nero's Golden House buried?

Because his successors built over it: the lake in its grounds was drained for the Colosseum and Trajan’s baths were raised directly over the palace. The burial is what preserved the rooms you can visit today.

Is the Domus Aurea completely underground?

What you visit is, yes — the surviving ground floor under the Parco del Colle Oppio, at around 10°C and damp, entered on a guided visit in a hard hat, with the Parco del Colle Oppio and Trajan’s baths above your head.

When was it buried?

In the decades after Nero’s death in AD 68, as his successors erased the palace by building on it. The rooms were found again around the end of the fifteenth century — the fuller history.