Caesar's House
After nearly a decade of work the house of Caesar Augustus, which dates from the period before he became emperor and was still plain Octavian has been reopened. The building, which lies on the slopes of the Palatine Hill, has been opened and shut with depressing regularity ever since its discovery in the 1970s as new discoveries have necessitated an ever-increasing programme of restoration and consolidation.
At present the four rooms on display have restricted access for small groups by special arrangement, as work is still continuing in other parts of the "domus", but it is hoped that full access will be possible from the end of 2008.
On display is a wonderful series of frescoes, the original decoration of the rooms, which was almost completely destroyed when the weight of Domitian's palace - built over the by-now buried house - caused the vaulted roof to collapse. After lying on the floor of the rooms for nearly 2,000 years, the fragments of painted plaster were carefully collected by the excavators, conserved and pieced together to reveal the original decorative scheme.
Like many of the houses we saw in Pompeii on the recent tour of Greece and Italy, the decorations consist of mock achitectural elements - pillars, doorways, windows and coffered ceilings - through whcih can be seen real or imaginary scenery in which tiny figures of humans and animals can be seen. Despite their long burial, the colours of the frescoes are still strong, with the reds, yellows and greens particularly vivid.
Quite apart from the intrinsic interest of the fact that we are walking where Rome's first emperor walked, there is the fact that although Octavian was a wealthy and important man, his house was in no way special compared to the houses of other nobles, so the restored buildings give us an idea of what every upper class home must have looked like in the 1st century BC.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
