Hello, everybody. And welcome back. The last time we talked about the residences of the noble families of Rome on the Palatine. We also know that man was going to be the first Emperor in Roman history was born on the Palatine. And today we'll try to have a look at his first house on the Palatine. This is the man. His original name was Gaius Octavius. Then he was adopted and appointed heir of Gaius Julius Caesar so he had to change his name, in Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus. During the year 20s of the first century B.C. when he had already appointed the most powerful man in the Roman state, he joined to his name as a Senate will, the name Augustus. This is a very important lead in words meaning something in between a grown man and a man blessed by the God. The young Octavian was a very lucky guy. His mother was the daughter of the sister of Julius Caesar. His father on the other hand was not a noble man but a very rich one. He was born in a small town south of Rome so the relation with the highest rank of the political power and an enormous wealth were absolutely within the reach of this young guy. He was born on the Palatine in this corner here and in the end he moved and established a real mansion on the opposite corner of the hill. This is how the different residences of Octavian and of Augustus at last were placed on the Palatine. This is the place where he was born, the house of his father. The place was called Ad Capita Bubula, the ox head in translation. And we don't know this house from an archaeological point of view but according to the topographical layout, we can envision in this area, we can imagine. We can imagine a house not much different from the ones we have already seen like the House of the Griffins or the house, so-called house of Livia, a regular or normal Roman house. During the years of unrest due to the civil wars, Octavian was sent away from Rome because it was too dangerous and he was still a boy. But when Julius Caesar became the most powerful man in Rome, he came back and lived in this place, Supra Scalas Anularius. There was a monumental staircase where the shops of people selling rings annually were placed. After that, he moved at last, here, right in front of the place where Romulus should have lived, and where the Romans believed that Romulus had founded Rome. So once again the place where he was born, the place where he moved during the 40s and at last, the proper house of Octavian. We know quite a lot about this house, thanks to the recent archaeological analysis, compared with the information which we can read in the literary sources. At first Octavian lived in a house which was placed here, not a very large one, with small rooms facing on to a peristyle and this house he bought from a noble man, Hortensius Hortalus. After that, he decided to enlarge his residence and created a second peristyle, as you can see here. The center of the house was this one where we have to imagine the atrium, the most important room in the Roman house. This is the part we can see still now, while this part is the one less known due to the fact that the Imperial Palace had been built upon that. So we have one area here in the center, one peristyle and rooms here, a second peristyle, rooms here and here. This is the cliff looking on to the valley. And here was a ramp, as you can see, leading from the downstairs up to the ground floor. Also in this case what we see is just the underground floor as we have already seen last time. Let's have a quick tour of this residence. The colonnade was split in two orders in the peristyle and decorated with these wonderful slabs. They're called Campana slabs. Around and inside the colonnade we have wonderful rooms, dining rooms like this one, wonderfully painted and decorated with four columns inside. You can see here another shot of this side of the wall. Near that was the ramp leading to the ground floor with the vault wonderfully decorated with plasters and paintings. On the other side of the peristyle we have the bedroom, the cubicula. Also in this case decorated with wonderful frescos like this one on pine festoons, of course, and this one with maps. Last, but not least, one wonderful room here, very small, very beautiful, which is the so-called studiorum. And this is how this wonderful house should have looked like. Here you can see the cliff of the Palatine, the stairs leading up to the place where Romulus should have founded Rome, the peristyle on this side, the peristyle on the other side, the so-called house of Livia and the other house we have already seen last time, the area with the atrium, and the underground floor with terraces here and here, stretching on to the valley. Let's have a closer look to this place here. This is a round underground room. Thanks to the [inaudible] , we have seen this wonderful painted round room. It was possibly a monumental fountain, a Grotto Nymphaeum. We know that there should have been a spring down there and it was the spring when the Roma believed that Romulus and Remus had been suckled by the she wolf. So this was one more way of trying to connect himself with the legend of the Roman founder. So we come to years 36 B.C. One night in that year a lightning struck the atrium of Augustus' house. He was terribly afraid of lightning and thunderbolt. But nonetheless, in a very clever way he declared to the Roman people that the lightning was the sign that the god Apollo was claiming his house. So he decided to stop completing the building of the second peristyle and created an entirely new project. Not just the house of Octavian had been struck by the lightening, because in a few years the Republic of Rome should have come to an end. Thank you very much.