Caligula's Nymphaeum (Horti Lamiani)

History

Lucullus started the fashion of building luxurious garden-palaces in the 1st century BC with the construction of his gardens on the Pincian Hill, soon followed by the fabled Gardens of Sallust between the Quirinal, Viminal and Campus Martius, which were the largest and richest in the Roman world at that time. In the 3rd century AD the total number of gardens (horti) occupied about a tenth of Rome and formed a green belt around the centre. As pleasure gardens with small palaces, the horti allowed the rich owner and his court to live in isolated comfort, away from the hectic life of the city but close to it. A fundamental feature of the horti was the large quantity of water necessary for the rich vegetation and for the functioning of the numerous fountains and nymphaea. This area was particularly suitable for these residences as eight of the eleven large aqueducts of the city reached the Esquiline.

The land for the Horti Lamiani was originally a cemetery just outside the ancient Servian Wall but was purchased by Lucius Aelius Lamia (Roman consul in 3 AD) who developed the property at the end of the 1st c. BC. He seems to have bequeathed the property to his friend the emperor Tiberius, and it became imperial state property. Emperor Caligula loved the place so much he established his residence there and further developed the property. In an evocative eyewitness account, the philosopher Philo visited the horti in 40 AD and accompanied Caligula inspecting the elaborate residence and ordering rooms to be made more sumptuous. Caligula was briefly buried at the site.

The Horti Lamiani adjoined the Gardens of Maecenas and the Gardens of Maiani. Under Claudius (41–54) the Horti Lamiani and Maiani were united and administered by a special superintendent (procurator hortorum Lamianorum et Maianorum). …

Excavations

The first discoveries took place in the 16th century, and finds of beautiful statues such as a Roman copy of the ancient Greek Discobolus, the thirteen Medici Niobids (a variant of the Laocoön and His Sons), and the fresco Nozze Aldobrandini were unearthed and which are now in museums. It became clear that the statues were in many cases artistic masterpieces.

In the 19th century Rodolfo Lanciani noticed ancient remains in building works in the area and found beautiful sculptures in subsequent excavations he organised. Decorations of the complex included frescoes, architectural elements in coloured marbles, and innumerable gilt-bronze sheets with inset gemstones. He reported:

I saw a gallery seventy-nine metres long (a cryptoporticus), the floor of which was made up of the rarest and most expensive varieties of alabaster and the ceiling supported by twenty-four fluted columns of antique yellow, resting on gilded bases; I saw another room, paved with slabs of peacock eyes, whose walls were covered with black slate plates, decorated with graceful arabesques executed in gold leaf; and finally I saw a third room, the floor of which was made up of alabaster segments, framed by glass pastegreens. In the walls of it were all around various jets of water one metre away from each other, which had to cross in various ways, with extraordinary light effect. All these things were discovered in November 1875.

A collapse of land had revealed an underground chamber (cryptoporticus) full of statues. The first to appear was a semi-colossal head of Bacchus, crowned with ivy and corymbs and eventually others appeared:

the semi-extended body of Bacchus

the busts of two Tritons on whose hair traces of gilding were preserved

the magnificent bust of Commodus as Hercules bordered by tritons and the various parts of the complex allegory

two statues of Muses

the beautiful statue of Esquiline Venus preparing to enter the bathroom by tying a ribbon around her hair.

Parts of the complex of the Horti Lamiani were brought to light in these excavations but were quickly re-buried. …

Museo Ninfeo

The museum is centred on a Roman hall attributed to Alexander Severus (222–235), who built the nearby nymphaeum of Alexander (known as the Trophies of Marius), by stamped water pipes (fistulae aquariae) which prove emperor's ownership. The hundreds of fragments of painted plaster and precious decorative materials, date the imperial residence and are extremely refined, and the new sector is related to the complex discovered by Lanciani by decorative marble elements identical to those unearthed in the nineteenth century.