Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Romano, be careful there.

On the outskirts of Rome,

archaeologists are breaking into a secret underground chamber.

Shall I keep widening here? Yes, yes.

Otherwise we'll not be able to move.

At this point I would just expand.

OK, OK.

I need a hard hat with a light.

NARRATOR: It could reveal clues to the disappearance of an ancient palace.

With my hands like this right? With your hands up.

NARRATOR: Emperor Nero's legendary Golden House.

Please be careful!

So?

There is a lot of burned material.

Bones!

NARRATOR: Rome, the eternal city.

Its monumental wonders still stand proud after

two millennia of history.

And one of its most fascinating ancient structures

lies buried here, beneath the city.

The Domus Aurea, the Golden House, a vast palace built in the First Century AD.

It was the most extravagant construction in the history of Rome.

Why was the Golden House buried?

And what can its fate reveal about its builder,

Rome's most notorious emperor, Nero?

NARRATOR: Today, teams of experts are launching investigations across

Italy that could offer new clues.

We are in the core of Rome. It's incredible.

We work where emperors have worked.

It's amazing.

NARRATOR: Beneath the Colle Oppio Park in the center of Rome,

a team of conservation specialists is fighting to

preserve the surviving remains of the Domus Aurea,

an underground maze of painted rooms and corridors.

Rome native Maria Bartoli, is the head of conservation.

I am certainly very proud to be working at the Domus Aurea

and to be part of a group responsible for the conservation

of a monument that is so important.

NARRATOR: The surviving sections of the Domus Aurea are buried up to 13 feet deep.

Until excavation in the 18th Century, almost all of the rooms were back-filled

with soil and rubble too.

The Golden House is in fragile condition.

There is a sense of great responsibility

in knowing that one is dealing with a monument

that has so many problems which are very difficult to resolve.

NARRATOR: The Earth above weighs more than 700 pounds per square foot.

The 2,000 year old structure wasn't built to bear this vast load,

so it's in danger of collapsing.

This is the saline fluorescence which retains droplets of water.

NARRATOR: Water is infiltrating from above and the once highly decorated walls,

are coated in dirt.

The painted wall is completely covered by this thick layer of very compact

carbonated earthy residues adhering to the surface of the paint film.

NARRATOR: The team must carefully clear the wall.

The operation is not easy, because there's a risk

of losing precious details of the decoration.

You definitely need to thin it out.

NARRATOR: The work is painstaking.

It takes hours to reveal and preserve every inch of the ancient decoration.

And with every passing day, the risk of losing this precious art grows greater.

These residues are potentially very harmful because

on the one hand, they can trigger microbiological attacks

and, on the other hand,

they can also detach, taking part of the decoration with them.

NARRATOR: Large swathes of the ancient walls have already been

eaten away by harmful algae that thrive in the humid climate here.

Maria must clean all of the walls to prevent another biological attack.

In the vast underground maze, she has a gargantuan task ahead of her.

NARRATOR: American archaeologist, Darius Arya is investigating

why Nero's magnificent palace ended up rotting underground.

22 years ago, Darius traded his home in the United States

for Italy's capital to follow his childhood fascination with Roman history.

Nero is a very interesting character.

I mean this person looms in the history books larger than life.

He was a showman.

He's still fascinating and those anecdotes

that are applied to him, whether or not they're true,

just adds this layers of understanding

the nuanced character of Nero.

NARRATOR: The fate of the Domus Aurea may be connected to Nero's own story.

Nero became Emperor at just 16 after his stepfather,

Claudius died in 54 AD.

Some say Claudius was poisoned by his wife, Agrippina

to make way for her son.

Ancient writers described Nero as a cold-blooded ruler,

reporting he poisoned his step-brother out of jealousy,

and had his domineering mother assassinated.

They claimed his taste for violence was limitless.

Roaming the streets at night in disguise,

he would stab victims at random and throw them into the sewers.

Darius wants to explore how much of Nero's reputation is true,

and if it is connected to the fate of the Domus Aurea.

NARRATOR: A few feet into the complex he spots a first clue,

an un-excavated room.

This room is filled with debris, it's filled with fragments of brick,

pottery fragments of tuff.

This is all building material.

I see some, uh, decoration, little bits and pieces of marble

here and there, and porphyry.

But this is an intentional fill.

This is a massive project to fill in this entire space in a very orderly fashion.

It is clear evidence someone deliberately buried the Domus Aurea.

Wow, look at this.

Strange shapes on the floor in one of the rooms,

could shed some more light.

You can see a pattern in the cement and literally

it's showing you where there were panels of cut marble,

that made a decorative pattern.

They've been removed.

So all we have just the imprint of what they once were

and how beautifully this floor would have been.

Decorative marble was an unmistakable mark of luxury

in the Roman world.

We can still see that, uh, you have this beautiful ceiling

with all kinds of decorative features and shapes,

elements framing them with the stucco work.

And there are traces of gilding in the ceiling.

NARRATOR: Darius can still make out

remains of unimaginable splendor.

It's clear that when Nero built the Domus Aurea,

he spared no expense.

Rooms were decorated with brilliant marble walls and

frescoes to impress his guests.

Ancient sources describe Nero's hunger for opulence:

they say he owned a golden fishing net,

a golden box in which he kept deadly poisons.

Even his chamber pot was made of gold.

He plundered the gold for his palace from all the corners of his vast empire.

It was a place for entertainment and leisure more than anything else.

This is not here the residence of the emperor.

This is a place for accommodating guests and putting on a great show.

The clues suggest that Nero's taste for luxury might be

a factor in the fate of his Golden House.

In Tivoli, just outside Rome, at the Villa Adriana.

Now we have to go inside.

NARRATOR: Archaeologists, Benedetta Adembri,

and Marco Fabbri are excavating the palace of the Emperor Hadrian,

who came just 49 years after Nero.

Is this the building?

Yes, this is the building. This one in front of us.

NARRATOR: Discoveries here may help reveal if Nero's Domus Aurea

was uniquely extravagant, or if other Emperors indulged

in similar extreme luxury.

NARRATOR: Today, the team is investigating an intriguing room

inside Hadrian's gymnasium.

Let's clear this place for a photo.

It was re-used in later times, and new floors were added.

Benedetta and Marco have discovered a void below them.

NARRATOR: It's possible that a forgotten part of the original room

might be hidden beneath.

We hope to find the best possible state of conservation

especially with wall coverings and floorings that are little known.

It would be an exceptional discovery.

NARRATOR: But they can't just break up the floor without

knowing what lies beneath.

It could cave in, risking their safety,

and damage to ancient remains.

Let's go. I'm recording now.

NARRATOR: The team lowers a camera down into the hole to inspect the void.

It reveals the walls continue below the floor,

but almost the entire space is filled with rubble.

Let's try to remove these two tiles.

NARRATOR: Now Marco can break up the floor.

The challenge is to remove the right tiles.

One mistake and the floor could collapse over the void.

Shall I keep widening here?

Yes, yes.

Otherwise we'll not be able to move.

NARRATOR: Now Marco can see the walls below.

But it's hard to make out any details.

I need a hard hat with a light.

Marco decides to venture into the cavity.

Even with 40 years of experience,

this is one of most challenging excavations in his career.

With my hands like this right? With your hands up.

Okay.

NARRATOR: On the Palatine, one of Rome's seven hills,

archaeologist, Maria Teresa D'Alessio

is investigating an intriguing site.

Hi guys, let's go.

A structure contemporary to Nero's Domus Aurea.

So we are in front of the Arch of Constantine and

the square of the Colosseum.

It's, uh, it's one of the most wonderful places in Rome for an archaeologist,

but it's also a little scary.

A big responsibility.

NARRATOR: The site is less than 500 yards from the buried

remains of Nero's Golden House.

Maria Teresa believes they could be connected.

Probably they, they were in the project of the structures

related to the Domus Aurea.

We know this from the orientation

of the structure, from the building techniques.

NARRATOR: This structure was originally just beyond

the boundary of Nero's Golden House.

It shows just how vast the whole palace was.

MARIA: The Domus Aurea occupied a very big part of the city.

NARRATOR: Ancient writers describe 300 rooms,

lavishly decorated with gold,

gems and mother-of-pearl.

The palace grounds spread between Rome's Oppian Hill and Palatine Hill

covering an area more than 20 times larger than

the Colosseum.

In the middle Nero built a private lake for boating.

Around the palace he grew

lavish gardens, vineyards, and forests.

And at the entrance,

he placed a colossal 120 foot tall bronze statue of himself.

The Domus Aurea was a gigantic construction.

NARRATOR: Maria Teresa's team is on a mission to unearth the structures here.

They could shed new light on who destroyed the Domus Aurea, and why.

We started from the, the high part of the level and we,

nothing were visible before we worked here and now

we are going down through times,

through the history.

It's like assembling a puzzle.

NARRATOR: Maria Teresa is checking the team's progress

when one of her excavators discovers what could be a clue.

Oh, wow.

NARRATOR: 110 miles south, at Baiae,

OK guys, the buoy is here,

NARRATOR: A team of underwater archaeologists

is investigating an extraordinary Roman city.

Seismic activity in the Fourth Century AD plunged Baiae into the sea.

300 years earlier, in Nero's time, it was a fashionable seaside resort,

famed for its thermal springs and bath houses.

Vast villas and estates filled the coastline,

only to slip into the sea.

We have around 177 hectares of Roman rooms underwater.

NARRATOR: Barbara Davidde spearheads the project to map

and restore the sunken villas that belonged to Nero,

his family, and Rome's political elite.

Barbara and her dive team head out on the boat,

to where the ruins of an imperial property are submerged.

It's always an, uh...

Exciting to, uh, start an activity underwater.

NARRATOR: Some 16 feet below the surface, beautiful statues come into view,

grouped around a long room.

BARBARA: We can see first the mother of Claudius,

of the Emperor Claudius, as Venus and the statues of

probably one of the daughter of Claudius,

or one of the daughter of the imperial family.

NARRATOR: The statues depict members of Nero's family,

the first imperial dynasty to rule Rome.

They're evidence of the presence of the emperor here,

and show how important Baiae was for his whole ruling family.

NARRATOR: Nero's ancestor, Julius Caesar, was murdered in 44 BC,

sparking a civil war that ended the Republic,

and led to a long line of emperors.

First was Caesar’s great nephew, Augustus, who ruled for 40 peaceful years,

and was declared a God after he died.

Tiberius came next in 14 AD.

He conquered parts of Germany, but was a reclusive emperor back home.

His successor Caligula was known for his cruelty.

He enjoyed watching tortures during his feasts.

His uncle Claudius followed in 41 AD.

He started the conquest of Britain, and named Nero as his successor.

The Julio-Claudian family made Baiae their seaside home and

built an opulent villa at this spot.

BARBARA: The ancient sources tell us that Baiae was called the "little Rome,"

where the emperors used to stay for their holidays,

but also to make important decisions and to meet very important people.

NARRATOR: The Villa was passed down through the generations to Nero.

Ancient writers said he hosted incredible feasts here.

NARRATOR: Barbara wants to preserve the site,

and detail all the ruins before the sea claims them.

BARBARA: Underwater is an harsh environment.

So archaeological remains are at risk.

It's, uh, a big fight against the marine organisms and against the, the waves,

the change of the sea level and so on.

NARRATOR: Southwest of Nero's villa,

the divers spot something on the seafloor.

As they brush away the silt, an incredible mosaic emerges.

NARRATOR: In Tivoli, just outside Rome.

Oh no! I'm stuck.

Marco descends into the underground chamber.

He hopes to find a lost part of Hadrian's villa below the new floor.

It could help reveal if other emperors' palaces were

as luxurious as Nero's Golden House.

There's a lot of building material here, lots of roof tiles.

And there's a lot of burned material.

Bones!

NARRATOR: It looks like an entire room that was carelessly

back-filled when the new floor was built.

Suddenly, mixed in with the rubble, Marco spots pieces of painted plaster.

Very beautiful ones.

Wait, there's another really beautiful fragment of fresco.

Some kind of pendant.

I'll bring it up now.

This is a goldmine.

So, we need to plan the removal of all the debris as soon as possible.

So Benedetta, this beautiful one with reeds comes from the bottom of the heap.

NARRATOR: Back above ground,

Marco and his colleague, Benedetta analyze the frescoes.

This is very different in consistency from the other one.

NARRATOR: The incredible fresco fragments probably date to Hadrian,

and the back-filled room forms a long lost part of his vast palace.

We are very happy and very excited about what is coming out.

NARRATOR: Now Marco and the team want to excavate the entire space.

They will have to be extremely careful.

The evidence so far suggests that there will be masses of

ancient relics mixed in with the rubble.

At the sunken city of Baiae, in the bay of Naples,

NARRATOR: Barbara's divers investigate the mosaic they found on the sea floor.

The strong current has lifted many of its delicate pieces.

The divers carefully identify missing tesserae among the sand.

Then they use special underwater mortar to reconstruct

the 2,000 year old mosaic,

a black and white fish made from pure marble pieces.

It was likely the floor of a lavish villa belonging to one of the political elite.

It's a discovery every time we see these submerged treasures.

NARRATOR: On the boat, Barbara analyses a larger piece of marble

recovered from the sea floor.

We have a marble from Africa,

from Asia, from Greece, and also from Italy.

These structures was decorated with the luxury marble

coming from all the Roman world.

NARRATOR: Discoveries like these reveal the lavish lifestyle of Baiae's rich.

In the First Century AD, this spa haven was renowned for

overindulgence and debauchery.

It was Rome's sin city, and Nero's favorite playground.

BARBARA: He loved Baiae.

That's why when they decided to build the Domus Aurea in Rome

he had the inspiration of the landscape of Baiae.

NARRATOR: When Nero built his Golden House with a massive artificial lake,

he brought Baiae and its excesses to Rome for all to witness.

Nero's notoriety and the downfall of his Domus Aurea

may have begun at Baiae.

The underwater team continues their investigation east-wards.

Soon a massive structure comes into view, with columned walls nearly

330 feet long and 200 feet wide,

right next to Nero's villa.

NARRATOR: In Tivoli, Marco and his team painstakingly remove

the rubble from the underground room at Hadrian's villa.

He identifies a structure emerging from the debris.

There is a staircase that goes down here.

There is one level that drops here and another level that drops like that.

NARRATOR: As they remove the rubble,

the features of the ancient room come into view.

That wall is clearly an original wall with yellow bricks.

And here we see one, two and three holes.

These holes are for the wall cladding.

We know that these walls were richly covered with frescoes.

NARRATOR: It's not long until more fragments of

the precious frescoes emerge.

Look!

Oh, how nice! Beautiful! Fantastic!

We got there!

NARRATOR: Digging deeper Marco uncovers more and more fragments.

Beautiful!

Incredibly preserved.

It's a treasure trove!

This is beautiful!

Look how good this is!

Light please. Thank you.

Yeah!

We didn't waste our Saturday!

We have 60 to 70 cm of this stuff here.

These are exceptional fragments. Bravo! Bravo!

We need to celebrate!

NARRATOR: The team continues to pull up precious fragments

from the room.

We are discovering a treasure trove,

a pile of frescoes at Villa Adriana

where these frescoes are relatively unknown.

It is possible that we could also find frescoes

still attached to the walls further down.

NARRATOR: Only a few traces of wall paintings have ever been

recovered from Hadrian's villa.

But here, sealed under the floor,

they have remained hidden from the elements and the eyes of robbers,

giving Marco a unique insight.

The small fragments coming out allow us to

understand the luxury of these places.

We are in a house where

luxury and technical skill are absolutely exceptional.

The hidden room shows Hadrian too lived in a elaborately decorated palace.

So the opulence of Nero's Domus Aurea can't be the only reason it was buried.

Cheers!

NARRATOR: Darius has also come to Tivoli and the Villa Adriana

to look for more clues.

There could be more to be found.

NARRATOR: Not from underground, but from above.

He sends up a high-definition drone to see the size of the Villa Adriana.

DARIUS: Really getting a grand view of the entire complex here.

This is just gorgeous!

DARIUS: There's a maritime theatre over there,

the so-called Greek and Latin libraries.

The hospitalia all the way over to basically the core of

the Imperial residence.

So there's just so much.

All just popping out amidst, you know, over 200 acres.

NARRATOR: Darius continues his investigation on foot.

DARIUS: I'm underneath now an entirely manmade construction.

What we have here are cells, one after the other, always the same.

This was what we'd call the slave corridor, the slave rooms.

NARRATOR: Inside the cells, Darius spots a curious feature.

There are brackets inserted on the walls for wooden floors,

so actually it was subdivided into mini floors,

little mezzanine floors.

So we know they're packing in as many people as possible.

And in fact, it's known as the Cento Camerelle,

the 100 rooms for thousands of slaves that

must have worked here, that lived here, that slept here,

making the villa work.

NARRATOR: With its over 200 acres and thousands of enslaved people,

the Villa Adriana was as lavishly decorated as

Nero's Domus Aurea, and twice as big.

It is expansive and it is massive,

bigger than most cities in the Roman world,

but it's outside the city of Rome.

Now if we take a look at the Domus Aurea,

you're taking this kind of concept of Hadrian's Villa but

you're putting into the city.

NARRATOR: The location of the Domus Aurea could explain why

it’s now buried, with Nero’s reputation rotting with it.

Nero built his palace in the center of Rome,

claiming a huge area of prime real estate and flaunting

his luxurious lifestyle for every Roman to see.

DARIUS: This was just something that had never been seen before,

and it was really something over the top.

NARRATOR: In central Rome, near the edge of the Domus Aurea,

Maria Teresa is examining the strange find made by one of her team.

And this is the left over material from,

from the production of something, probably metal because it's very heavy.

NARRATOR: The discovery comes from a layer just above Nero's building here,

dating to the time after the destruction of the palace.

It is evidence of a change in the way the area was used after Nero.

NARRATOR: In Nero's day the Palatine was where the rich and powerful lived.

MARIA: On the top of the Palatine there was, uh,

houses of emperors because Romulus, the founder,

was the first one who lived on the top of the hill.

And that's why Augustus and other emperors wanted to live there.

NARRATOR: This area in the vibrant heart of Rome was in demand and

changed use repeatedly over the centuries.

In the dig headquarters, Maria Teresa studies excavation records,

to explore how Nero managed to build his 125 acre palace complex

on this coveted land.

She examines a curious layer discovered below his building.

MARIA: We can see these, uh, um,

beautiful stairway, marble stairs, with black traces on the walls,

and also pottery with ashes.

NARRATOR: The traces of black charring and ashes point to one thing,

a ferocious fire.

NARRATOR: In 64 AD, ten years into Nero's reign,

a fire started near a chariot racing arena,

and raged across the city for six days.

Ancient writers claimed emperor Nero

callously played his lyre as he watched the event unfold.

Cramped streets helped the inferno spread,

destroying over half the city,

and clearing enough space for Nero to build his Domus Aurea.

Nero accused Christians of starting the fire,

and gruesomely executed them,

allegedly burning some as torches at his garden parties.

We, we know that slope of the Palatine burned

with the other structures within the fire of 64,

and then was the new construction of the Domus Aurea.

NARRATOR: Some ancient historians claimed Nero had

started and spread the fire deliberately.

Modern investigations have since cast doubt on his guilt.

Rome was a cramped tinderbox ready to ignite with

any careless spark from countless open fires.

Nero even opened public buildings and his own estates as shelters,

and housed those made homeless.

But the rumors of his involvement were fanned by

Nero's enemies in the immediate aftermath,

incensed by excess spending and taxation,

and now outraged by the building of the Domus Aurea.

Nero and his palace were now in peril.

NARRATOR: In the bay of Naples, at the sunken city of Baiae,

Barbara and her team are continuing their investigation

of the structure next to Nero's palace.

It's a massive villa.

On board the dive boat, she analyses an inscribed lead pipe

previously recovered from the complex.

This object, this very important for us because

thanks to this object, we can know the name of the owners

of this very important villa.

NARRATOR: The inscription on the pipe reads L Pisonis.

The Pisoni family was a very important family during

the reign of Nero.

NARRATOR: Gaius Calpurnius Piso was a high-ranking senator,

one of Rome's richest and most powerful men.

From his villa at Baiae he watched Nero's excesses for 11 years,

until the building of the Domus Aurea on the scorched ruins of Rome

drove him into action.

One year after the fire,

Piso organized a plot to kill Nero at Baiae.

One of the conspirators instructed a former servant to

sharpen a knife for the assassination,

but the suspicious man reported his former master to Nero's secretary,

foiling the plot and revealing the 41 conspirators.

NARRATOR: A vengeful Nero ordered Piso to commit suicide,

a noble death in Roman eyes.

The others were executed, or forced into exile.

BARBARA: Nero discovered them,

kill them and took all the properties of the Pisoni family.

NARRATOR: Barbara's investigation at Baiae helps

show how Nero lost favor with the political elite who despised

his indulgent palace.

He escaped Piso's plot but it marked the beginning of the end for Nero,

his reputation, and his extravagant Domus Aurea.

NARRATOR: In central Rome, on the Palatine Hill,

Maria Teresa has found more clues that could shed light on

the ultimate fate of the emperor's hated building.

We are quite sure that there is a basin because

we have a waterproof mortar inside the basin,

and we have lot of scrap materials like, uh, metals and glasses.

So it's probably functioned for the production of these materials.

Finding the scrap metal and basin

suggests an industrial use for the area, probably a metal working shop.

It's a huge change for a site once next to an imperial palace.

In a different part of the site, the team make another discovery.

We have found these incredible stairs that is, uh, uh,

built later during the imperial age.

We have different levels inside the building,

and bottom level and another floor upstairs.

And it connects the lower part of this, uh, square

and this street with the upper level of the Palatine probably.

We are the first archaeologists who find these stairway.

So we are very excited about this.

Maria Teresa recognizes this type of construction.

Something similar was excavated near here

in another part of the, the Palatine.

And it was like great market built under Hadrian.

NARRATOR: A change in use of this space,

from an imperial building to a public market could be an

important clue to the demise of the Domus Aurea.

It is very interesting that it could

be an old market because Nero wants all this area for himself,

for his private, own palace.

Later emperors destroyed this project of Nero's and

they built other structures here, probably with a public function,

just to give, um, the Roman citizens

what Nero took for himself.

NARRATOR: Maria Teresa's work helps prove the Domus Aurea

was deliberately buried by later Emperors.

Her search for more evidence continues.

Inside the underground remains of the Domus Aurea,

Maria is checking on the progress the conservation team is making.

Here, Maria, we cleaned this seated figure.

You can see the drapery.

You see in the area here a whole female figure came out.

Beautiful.

NARRATOR: After days of painstaking work,

they have managed to recover delicate paintings of

human figures and ornate columns.

The team still has a lot of work ahead of them.

In the humid microclimate inside the Domus Aurea,

the fight against its deterioration will continue.

But the team's efforts have been successful so far,

bringing new sections of Nero's buried palace back into view for

the first time in 2,000 years.

I didn't expect it. I didn't dream of being able to recover so much.

NARRATOR: Darius's investigation into Nero's notoriety and

the fate of the Domus Aurea,

finally brings him to Rome's most famous landmark,

the Colosseum.

He spots a clue abandoned, in a corner of the Colosseum square.

So over here you have an inscription,

it's a modern inscription, and it says that this outline here

is for the base of where the colossal Statue of Nero once stood.

NARRATOR: This colossal 125 feet tall statue originally

stood at the entrance of the Domus Aurea, but was moved to

this new location after Nero's death.

NARRATOR: According to ancient writers, by 68 AD,

Nero was so reviled his Praetorian Guard deserted him.

Fearing for his life, he fled Rome with just four attendants

to take refuge in a suburban villa.

The senate declared Nero a public enemy, and sentenced him to be beaten to death.

When guards finally came to arrest him, Nero begged his private secretary,

Epaphroditus, to help him commit suicide.

NARRATOR: Nero was dead but his Domus Aurea remained.

Darius finds more traces of the old palace around the Colosseum.

So we have right here a bunch of shaved down walls,

and we can tell this is Neronian by the building typology,

by the kind of bricks.

Here these truncated walls were part of pavilion spaces that

then lined the lake that was part of the Domus Aurea complex.

NARRATOR: Shortly after Nero's death the new Emperor, Vespasian,

ordered the lake to be drained.

He wanted to make way for a new construction,

the Colosseum.

DARIUS: That's a bold political statement.

It's a powerful political message.

Placing that very public amphitheater in a place that had

previously been occupied by this exaggerated residential complex

of Nero, the Domus Aurea.

NARRATOR: Vespasian and successive Roman Emperors were

careful not to flaunt their spectacular wealth.

Building by building they buried Nero's Golden House,

and gave central Rome back to the Roman people.

The magnificent palace was buried,

leaving its golden rooms and precious frescoes to rot,

alongside Nero's reputation.

It's really hard, uh, nowadays to rehabilitate

the character and the reign of Nero.

He did obviously bear the brunt of people's, uh, anger and

displeasure when he created his massive Domus Aurea.

He ends up, uh, dying alone.

Doesn't have much of a great legacy.

NARRATOR: Though there is some evidence Nero was popular with

the common people of Rome, his reputation was forged,

by historians writing in the reign of his immediate successors.

They may have tried to curry their favor with

negative depictions of him.

I almost feel sorry for Nero.

Almost.

DARIUS: Ultimately, I think, you know,

the history books do judge him fairly,

because his way of running the government and so forth

weren't really taking Rome in the direction of stability and

continued success.

But we're still kind of enamored

with this larger than life persona.

NARRATOR: This season, our archaeologists have unearthed

new evidence about Rome's most notorious emperor,

and the fate of his infamous palace.

Their combined downfall was due to Nero's taste for immeasurable luxury,

the sheer scale of his golden palace,

and his land grab of the smoldering ruins of burned down Rome.

Their work will continue, and their discoveries will shed

more light on Rome's most reviled emperor.