Donald Trump has knocked down the east wing of the White House and is turning it into his Golden Ballroom. Might he be tempted to go a step further and build a Golden House (Domus aurea), as Nero did?
Nero was as besotted with gold as Trump is. He wrote poems in gold, preserved his first beard in a golden box, possessed a golden fishing net, had a golden box of poisons and golden chamber pot, and shod his second wife’s mules in gold. When the king of Armenia visited, he had the theatre of Pompey – the stage, the walls, everything – somehow gilded.
In 64 bc a devastating fire hit Rome (was Nero complicit?). Only four out of Rome’s 14 regions were untouched. While Nero did a superb job rebuilding and widening the narrow, winding, crowded streets of the fire-prone city, he seized 200 acres of prime property in the middle of Rome to build a Domus aurea for himself with 300 rooms, designed not for normal living (no bedrooms) but purely for pleasure, and all integrated into woods, lakes, fields and vineyards complete with long, open vistas and animals, tame and wild.
What was new was the architectural and artistic breakthrough in the stunning use of interior curved space. Using all the latest building techniques made possible by concrete, it revolutionised the idea of what an emperor’s palace should be – soaring vaulted ceilings, vast domes, a rotating dining room with a ceiling mechanism that turned like the heavens, endless sequences of complex interlinked corridors, dining rooms and chambers (the one side that survives has 150 rooms), decorated with gold and jewellery in abundance, flowers and perfumes showering over diners from the ceilings, even waterfalls. To front it, he had a colossus built: a huge statue, 120ft tall – of himself. ‘Now at last I can live like a human!’ Nero exclaimed.
When Nero committed suicide in ad 68, it was all stripped and flattened. Subsequent emperors built a huge bath complex over it and the Colosseum – for the public to enjoy.
Maybe Mr Trump could trial his Golden House in Gaza (which means ‘treasure’, in Latin).
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