Frescoes and faeces as Nero's palace opens in Rome

Razed to the ground by the Great Fire of Rome, Emperor Nero’s original palace opened to the public for the first time on Friday after a painstaking 10-year restoration. The ruins of the sumptuous “Domus Transitoria”, once decorated with gold leaf, precious stones and mother of pearl, lie next to a well-preserved 50-seat latrine used communally by builders and slaves. Nero claimed to be a descendant of Aeneas — a legendary hero of the Trojan War, as Homer tells it in the Iliad — and was a big fan of Trojan heroics. He had the ceilings of his palace adorned with mythical scenes from the Trojan War, some of which are now on display at the Palatine Museum next door. The palace was designed to provide respite from baking summer heat, and the emperor would likely have sat on a marble throne facing a line of fountains, under the shade of a silken