Flavian Palace

Layout

The Domus Flavia is organized around a large peristyle courtyard surrounded by rooms of considerable height. Only a few walls survive to a height of approximately 16 m (52 ft); some are about 3 m (9.8 ft) thick. The palace was constructed over portions of Nero's earlier residences, the Domus Transitoria and Domus Aurea, and excavations have shown that it retained parts of their layout.

On the northern side, the enormous aula regia was the central and largest room. It was flanked by two smaller reception rooms, conventionally called the Basilica and the Lararium. The northern façades of the three rooms opened onto a portico forming the principal entrance to the palace for visitors arriving from the Roman Forum.

The Aula Regia was an enormous rectangular audience chamber used for important receptions and embassies. A shallow apse was built into its southern wall, where the emperor would have sat during audiences; doorways on either side opened directly onto the peristyle. To the north, the hall opened onto a monumental portico overlooking the palace forecourt, from which the emperor received the morning salutatio.

The poet Statius, a contemporary of Domitian, described the splendour of the palace, particularly the Aula Regia, in his Silvae:

Awesome and vast is the edifice, distinguished not by a hundred columns but by as many as could shoulder the gods and the sky if Atlas were let off. The Thunderer's palace next door gapes at it and the gods rejoice that you are lodged in a like abode […]: so great extends the structure and the sweep of the far-flung hall, more expansive than that of an open plain, embracing much enclosed sky and lesser only than its master.

The hall's relatively thin walls precluded a vaulted roof across its 30.6 m (100 ft) span. It was probably covered by roof trusses concealed beneath a coffered ceiling rising at least 30 m (98 ft) above the floor. …