[2] According to Suetonius (Nero 31.1): "He built a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the Domus Transitoria, but when it was burned down shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House".

[4]: 232 The house was built around a big peristyle with porticos on three sides, while the fourth on the north consisted of a cryptoporticus which supported the rear embankment.

At the centre, occupied now by a series of long barrel vaults to support the overlying Trajanic baths are the remains of a fountain; on the eastern part is a large nymphaeum that opens to the courtyard.

Surrounded by a portico of four columns it was equipped with a cascading fountain on the bottom, whose water was conveyed into a central basin.

Five metres below Hadrian's Temple of Venus and Roma a sumptuous rotunda belonging to the palace was discovered in 1828, cut through by foundations of the Domus Aurea.

[5] The elaborate domed room which interconnected two barrel-vaulted corridors was spectacular architecturally and had marble-lined pools and paving in multicoloured opus sectile, all still largely intact beneath the temple.