Hello everybody and welcome back. The Palatine Hill was essentially a housing area, a residential area. According to the Roman myth, the founder himself lived on the Palatine, and the kings needed to live on the Palatine near the Sanctuary of Vesta. We know a certain number of noble families living on the Palatine since the beginning of the fifth century, until the end of the fourth century, and since the end of the second century BC on we know of an increasing number of famous and noble people, senators and magistrates living on the hill. We can locate some of these houses in different parts of the hill, such as the northern slope along the Sacred Way and the corners or the Western side of the hill. From an archaeological point of view, we can see on the Palatine different types of the so-called Roman house. This one, for example, in this very point here, has a small part with two small dining rooms and a bedroom here. These were part of a richly decorated residence, as you can see from this rich floor here and this painting on the wall with the plaster wide here. This is why this house is called The House of the Griffins because of this fresco here. All this was a part enlarged at a later stage, as you can see here, and painted in a different style. Later on, it tended to be the underground floor of an upper house, as you can see from this section here. This was a typical Roman house centered on this kind of room, the atrium with ally on the side and a large room here, the tablinum, right on the axis of the entrance here. You can see the vestibulum is the entrance of the house. Behind the house, we can imagine the peristyle, a garden surrounded by columns, as you can see from this section here. These are the underground rooms, the dining room here, and the plaster with the griffins here where the letter B is. This ground floor was also richly decorated. This is a very ancient model of the Roman house, which we've already seen on the northern slope in the sixth century BC, and now is turning into a more elaborate model as we can see, for a more regular form of the atrium in the center of this house. Houses not very different from this one are located nearby, as you can see here. One house and another house here. Once again, we're dealing with the underground floors because the upper floor had been destroyed by the later edition, in particular here for the imperial palace that was built on this place in the first century AD on. Once again, we have this underground floor with the peristyle, dining rooms, and bedroom here. An upper floor, we can imagine centered on an atrium here on a different side. Here with a column on each corner of a basin here and the peristyle on the back. This is a second example of the decoration of this house. This is a basin for the breeding of fish, as you can see, which was here, exactly here in the house. If we move along the Sacred Way, we find once again, different kinds of houses, especially in this spot here. We're along the Sacred Way near the reconstructed gate, a very ancient entrance to the Palatine along the street, climbing up to the hill from the Sacred Way near the house of the Pontifex Maximus, near the Sanctuary of Vesta. At the end of the third century BC, a great fire destroyed the forum area and the houses that were on the lower part of the Palatine slope. A new area was created with these four different houses. We see different atria here with columns here, two atria here with gardens on the back and an atrium with ally and a hole here at the tablinum. In this image here you can see how these different houses, 1,2,3, and 4 well placed along the Sacred Way and along the second street climbing up the Palatine and you can see the relation between the open area and the gardens on the back and the rooftop spaces. Atria here, a triclinium here, and bedrooms here and here. In front of each house on each side of the entrance, you had shops taberna. During the 1st century BC, a very famous man, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, bought this house here and this one. He joined the two houses and created one huge residence. On the ground floor of this residents, he created 62 small rooms. This is a bedroom reseller where the sevens in the house were housed. The impressive thing is that all these underground world was situated underneath the atrium, you had the master on top and the slaves underneath. This is the area of the new house joining the other two previous ones. This was a very famous residence because this guy, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, in the year 58 BC, decided to create a theater, a contemporary theater adorned with a large number of marble columns. Four of these columns at the end of the ceremony, he decided to bring inside his house and used four of these columns, as you can see here and placed them at the corner of the basin in the center of this atrium house. This was perceived as an absolute scandal, as an absolute luxury. Here you can see once again the new residence and the roof of the large atrium supported by the four huge columns we've already seen. Once again, the upper floor, the ground floor here, and the underground floor, the atrium of the master and the bedrooms underneath here where the slaves were housed. This was a very common feature in a Roman house. We commonly found underground rooms for slaves, either in private houses, as you can see here. This is a minor house along the Sacred Way, on the opposite side of the Sacred Way. Here is a much nobler example. This is the house of the emperor. Even here, we have underground rooms for slaves. In this case we shall see where the offices of the empire were placed. In the end, these luxuries had to be abandoned, the atrium had to be reduced, and the luxury columns were moved once again, somewhere else. Now, we can move on to the opposite side of the palatine along the western slope. Here, we can figure out a whole layout aligned on the most important way of this hill, leading from the Sacred Way to the place where Rome was founded. We have 1, 2, 3, 4 blocks. This was called the most beautiful place in Rome, called [inaudible] in Rome. We know, as you can see here, quite a high number of names of people living in this area. Cicero is one of the most famous of these. Cicero was not a noble man. He was born in a small town in the south of Latium, but nonetheless, he was a Roman citizen and he became a magister and then became a counsel other than a famous lawyer so he could afford to live in the most beautiful place in Rome. Thanks to the literary sources, we know a lot about the happenings which involve these houses. For example, the neighbor of Cicero, Claudius. He was one of the strongest enemies in the political struggle. He was sent into exile and turned his house into a sanctuary, as you can see here, for example. But Cicero succeeded in coming back and once again his house and destroyed the sanctuary inside the house. You can see in the year 58, the sanctuary inside the house. The following year, 57, the sanctuary has been abandoned and the new peristyle has been built inside here. In this section, you can see the full house. This is the place where the part with the imperial palace, as you can see from this red line, will be built. Maybe the most famous person living on the Palatine was the first emperor of Rome, Octavian. He was born on this spot. Here was his father's house. During the years of unrest, during the Civil War, his mother sent him away from Rome, but then he came back and they chose to live on the opposite corner of the hill, right in front of the place where Rome had been founded. But that's another story. Thank you very much.
