The fire began in a small shop on 19 July AD 64 in the area of the Circus Maximus. It would quickly swell to become the greatest conflagration that ancient Rome would ever know. As it gathered momentum, it rampaged through the narrow streets, tenement blocks, porticoes and alleyways in the heart of Rome between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. The fire continued for six days and then, just when it was believed to have died out, it reignited and continued for three more days. By the time it had finished, only four of Rome’s fourteen districts would still be intact; three were completely destroyed, and the others largely devastated but for the charred shells of a few buildings. Many people died and thousands of homes were destroyed, from the tenements of low-born plebs to the grand town houses of landed senators. Rome also lost some of her ancient history: the temples and ancient cult sites associated with the city’s forefathers – Romulus, Numa and Evander.
Nero was in Antium, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Rome, where he could now see the fire due to the raging intensity of the flames. He may have paused to play the lyre while the city burnt, but he also responded effectively and with urgency. He ordered immediate relief to be provided for those fleeing the fire. To the homeless he opened up the Field of Mars, including Agrippa’s public buildings as well as the private gardens of his own palace. The Praetorian Guard, under the leadership of Rufus, was ordered to construct temporary accommodation to house those who had lost everything in the fire. Tigellinus too, who had been the head of Rome’s fire brigade, swung into action on Nero’s orders, responding effectively to the crisis. However, it was only once the Senate had had the opportunity of assessing the extent of the damage to Rome that Nero’s best leadership was revealed.
After surveying the ruins, taking advice from senators and advisers, and agreeing to pay personally for the clearance of debris, Nero stated his desire to make sure that such a tragedy never happened in Rome again. He proposed building regulations that included restricting the height of houses and tenements, and specifying permissible types of timber construction. By law streets were to be a certain width and carefully laid out according to plan. New buildings would have to feature an internal courtyard to ensure that there were breathing spaces between them. They would be in sharp contrast to the rickety tenements that had so recently and tragically collapsed. Porticoes and colonnades along streets and at the front of houses were to be added. The emperor ensured that he paid for these personally. In the event of another fire, Romans must at all costs be protected from falling debris. But such steps were just the beginning. As he formulated all these measures, Nero realized that this terrible tragedy actually presented Rome with an opportunity. To the assembled senators the emperor proposed not simply to rebuild Rome, but to make it more impressive than it was before – even greater than the city built by the first emperor, Augustus. This was going to be a city fit for the new age of Nero.
The emperor’s visionary leadership in the face of Rome’s greatest challenge was met with jubilant, rapturous applause. Nero made good his promises too: there were generous incentives for private investors to complete their building projects, and, as coins of AD 64 describe, Nero ensured the swift restoration of the Temple of Vesta, the Market for Provisions and the popular Circus Maximus. But the applauding senators would soon discover that Nero’s new public plans for Rome included a more personal, private building project: a new palace for the emperor. This was an architectural project that would come to symbolize both the inspiration and tyranny of Nero’s reign.
Nero had already built an elegant mansion for himself on the Palatine Hill, where Augustus had his residence, and which was thereafter associated with imperial homes. Nero’s mansion now became merely an entrance, an elaborate vestibule leading to the vast complex of his proposed new residence. The Golden House consisted of several lavish villas and buildings centred on a lake. The magnificent landscaped gardens featured not just lawns but ‘ploughed fields, vineyards, pastures and woodlands, and a multitude of all sorts of domestic and wild animals’. This was a kind of fashionable high artifice formed from nature, a style of ‘faked rusticity’ affording exquisite views.21 There were numerous fanciful and playful flights of folly too: grottoes, colonnades, pavilions and arcades. The complex filled the valley between the Palatine, Esquiline and Caelian hills, and is estimated to have covered somewhere between 50 and 120 hectares (125 and 300 acres).
The centrepiece was Nero’s main palace – two grand wings of intricately designed rooms built over two storeys and flanking a central courtyard. Some of it survives today. The architects Severus and Celer introduced daring new styles and techniques, demonstrated by an octagonal hall in the east wing that was topped by a dome incorporating the latest developments in cloister vaulting. Even the lighting was revolutionary: a series of apertures in the circular crown between the eight walls of the hall and the dome above. At ground level too the eight walls lent further sophistication: the front three gave on to the park, four gave on to vaulted rooms, and the last, at the back, featured a flight of steps down which water streamed. The sections of the palace that are visible today reveal that Nero also employed the greatest painters of the day. They provided exquisite paintings, chic frescoes and decorated panels in the many bedrooms and reception rooms that led off the hall.
The palace was also a showcase of technical innovations and novelty gadgets. The baths boasted both flowing salt water from the sea and sulphurous water from natural springs. In the dining rooms movable ivory panels released flower petals on to the guests seated below, while disguised pipes sprayed them with perfume. The pièce de résistance was a constantly revolving ceiling in one banqueting hall, the design of which reflected the day and night sky.22 The Golden House was the very height of fashion and good taste, utterly exquisite in every detail. Anyone entering it would have been seduced by its mesmerizing elegance and artistic ambition. But outside lay a reality check: to most Roman citizens, Nero was simply turning the very heart of the city into a private residence devoted to his pleasure.
The Golden House robbed the plebs of places to live; graffiti and satirical verses claimed that the palace was swallowing up Rome itself. Conservatives denounced the break with Rome’s ancient history; Nero’s pleasure palace had even devoured the site dedicated to the temple to his adoptive father, the divine Claudius.23 This, said Nero’s critics, showed that filial piety, a traditional Roman virtue, had been destroyed. Accordingly, people spread malicious rumours suggesting that the fire had been started deliberately to clear Rome for Nero’s megalomaniac vision. This accusation was fuelled by a further rumour that the second fire had begun on the estate of Tigellinus. Indeed, such was the persistent power of the rumours that Nero resorted to drastic measures. He made scapegoats of the sect of Christians in Rome. They were arrested and, as a form of public entertainment, Nero hosted the spectacle of their deaths in his own gardens and in the restored Circus Maximus. The Christians were dressed in wild animal skins and ravaged to death by dogs, or else crucified, their bodies torched to light up the night sky.24