After you pass the two large pillars decorated with Nero's portrait found on the slopes of the Colle Oppio, you come to the entrance to the excavations of the Domus Aurea-Nero's Golden House. There is a guided underground tour that allows you to see some of the most important rooms in Nero's residence.

After the Great Fire of 64 AD, the architects, Severus and Celer, built this home for Nero, and the most spectacular section was located here, on the Colle Oppio. This is how the historian Suetonius described it: "The building extended from the Palatine to the Esquiline . . . to understand its size and its magnificence, suffice to say that a colossal statue of Nero, 120 feet high, stood in the entrance hall and there were three sets of colonnades extending for a mile.
A lake, more a sea than a lake, was surrounded by buildings as large as cities. Behind this, there were villas with fields, vineyards and pastures, woods teeming with every kind of domestic and wild animal. Other parts of the house were covered with gold, studded with precious gems and mother-of pearl.
The dining room had ceilings of fretted ivory whose panels could slide open and, through the apertures, there was a rain of flowers and perfumes. The principal dining room was circular and revolved continuously day and night, just like the earth. The baths were supplied with both sea water and sulfurous spa water."