Caligula’s Long Hidden Garden To Open As New Subterranean Gallery In Rome
Known as quite the despot, Roman Emperor Caligula had extravagant tastes to which his exotic pleasure garden was a testament. Buried for centuries beneath Rome’s streets, the remains of the lavish Horti Lamiani will be visitable by the public this spring. Emperor from 37 to 41 CE, Caligula was notorious for his tyrannical behavior, a much propagated reputation but one which is often disputed by historians. His luxurious streak, however, is immortalized in the remaining artifacts of his Horti Lamiani garden of delights, a monumental compound of villas, shrines, and a bathhouse encircled by curated, exotic landscapes. Discovered beneath the earth are remnants of this imperial park: rich marble floors, pavilions, fountains and vibrant frescoes. These lavishly decorated spaces would also once have been home to prowling lions, majestic peacocks and other exotic animals. The archeological remains will open to the public in spring in the form of a subterranean gallery named the Nymphaeum Museum of Piazza Vittorio. Managed by Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Cultural Activities and Tourism, the museum will display elements of the house and garden including a marble staircase and opulent frescoes. Historian Daisy Dunn told the New York Times, “The frescoes are incredibly ornate and of a very high decorative standard. Given the descriptions of Caligula’s licentious lifestyle and appetite for luxury, we might have expected the designs to be quite gauche.”The marble surfaces are also of remarkable sophistication with intricate, multicolored patterns. Decorations were carved into marble slabs and then filled with other colored marble, in a similar technique to marquetry. Mirella Serlorenzi, Director of Excavations at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, speaking to Italian newspaper Il Messaggero, described the walls as “painted in marble”. In 2006, excavations began beneath the 19th-century office building located on the Esquiline Hill, across which the original property would have extended. The pension company that owns the building, Enpam, invested $3.5 million in the archeological dig, which was carried out while a new office building was being constructed above the site. Archeologists unearthed coins, jewels, theatre masks, fragments of fountains, exotic seeds from plants like citron and apricot, the bones of animals like peacocks, ostriches and lions and the tooth of a bear. This imperial complex had already been excavated in the 19th century, when a theatre, thermal baths, and an underground gallery with a precious alabaster floor and columns of the sumptuous giallo antico yellow marble were discovered. Classical sculptures were also unearthed at this time, including the Esquiline Venus and Commodus as Hercules, now housed in the Capitoline Museums. Caligula, officially known as Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, is said to have inherited this extravagant property from the previous emperor Tiberius.
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