The theater where Nero would have performed during the fire of Rome discovered under a palace

The case was bristling with columns plated with gold leaf and sumptuous marble ornaments. Nothing less was needed to exalt the pride of an artist. Or an emperor. The archaeological authorities of Rome announced on July 26 that they had found the luxurious remains of Nero's theater. Well known by historical sources, this long coveted public monument has escaped the sagacity and tools of researchers for several centuries. He rested five meters below the courtyard of the Palazzo della Rovere, a splendid 15th century building with a caramel facade, located along Via della Conciliazione, the main artery that connects St. Peter's Square to Castel Sant'Angelo.

"This is a discovery of exceptional importance which testifies to the place where Nero rehearsed his poetry and song performances", rejoiced in a press release Daniela Porro, head of the Special Superintendency for the Archaeological Assets of Rome - the public body in charge of excavations in the Italian capital. His team presented to the press the various structures partially unearthed in the greatest secrecy since 2020, including the cavea - the semicircular tiers of the Roman theater. Collapsed columns as well as painted walls and brick facing arranged in places in opus reticulatum, characterized here by polychrome rubble stones in fishing net, completed the whole.

"The structures were provided with precious and refined coatings, so sumptuous that it should very likely be a building financed with imperial funds", indicated the scientific manager of the preventive excavation, Alessio De Cristofaro, to the Roman daily. He Messenger. The edifice spanned more than 42 meters in diameter, according to estimates by archaeologists, who were able to date the site to the middle of the 1st century AD, somewhere under the reigns of Caligula (37-41), Claudius (41-54) and Nero (54-68). According to Alessio De Cristofaro, however, several exuberances of the decor point to the Neronian period, such as a two-faced head sculpted in the effigy not of Janus, the two-faced Roman god, but of the Greek deities Zeus and Dionysos.

Like the Domus Aurea and the Neronian Colossus - a monumental statue erected on the current site of the Colosseum - two emblematic monuments of the reign of Nero, the sumptuous theater had drawn the wrath of Roman historians such as Suetonius and Dio Cassius. "In order to exalt the imperial power, luxury had reached such levels that Pliny the Elder exclaimed, scandalized: "In Rome, we dismantle the mountains to build palaces!", tells our Italian colleagues Marzia Di Mento, the director of the dig.

In Antiquity, Nero's taste for the lyrical arts, and for the lyre in particular, was known and often misused by Roman historians, many of whom maintained a dark legend around the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Thus, on the day of the great fire of Rome, in 64, Nero seemed to be precisely at his theater, according to the rumor peddled in the streets of the city. "The rumor had spread that at the very moment when Rome was in flames, the prince had gone up to his personal theater and had sung of the ruin of Troy, equating the present evils with the disasters of yesteryear," says Livy. .

However, Nero's theater had not been set up in the heart of Rome, but on the western margins of the city, in the Vatican plain. It stood near the circus built by Caligula on the estate given to his mother, Agrippina the Elder. The hypothetical lineaments of this building dedicated to chariot races, and where the apostle Peter would have died, are among the additional structures brought to light by archaeologists during their three years of excavation. The researchers also said that they had unearthed a large collection of small furniture, several hundred pieces including fine ceramic jugs, early Christian bronze pendants and glassware from the medieval period, extremely rare in Rome.

At the end of the multi-year study which is now looming, the various objects taken from the site will be presented in Roman museums. As for the ancient site, it will be reburied in order to be better preserved for future generations and not to spoil the partial redevelopment project of the Palazzo della Rovere into a luxury Four Seasons hotel. Supposed to open in 2025 in a wing of the palace, the establishment will present a fountain garden in the courtyard at the theater of Nero.