Nero took great interest in every detail of the project, according to Tacitus’ Annals, and oversaw the engineer-architects, Celer and Severus, who were also responsible for the attempted navigable canal with which Nero hoped to link Misenum with Lake Avernus. There were pools in the floors and fountains splashing in the corridors. Rooms sheathed in dazzling polished white marble were given richly varied floor plans, shaped with niches and exedras that concentrated or dispersed the daylight. No kitchens or latrines have been discovered either.

Nero’s own palace remained on the Quirinal Hill. The Golden House was designed as a place of entertainment, as shown by the presence of 300 rooms without any sleeping quarters. This building took the name “Colosseum” in the Middle Ages, after the statue nearby, or, as some historians believe, because of the sheer size of the building. Hadrian moved it, with the help of the architect Decrianus and 24 elephants, to a position next to the Flavian Amphitheater. The face of the statue was modified shortly after Nero’s death during Vespasian’s reign to make it truly a statue of Sol. This idea is widely accepted among scholars, but some are convinced that Nero was not identified with Sol while he was alive. The statue was placed just outside the main palace entrance at the terminus of the Via Appia in a large atrium of porticoes that divided the city from the private villa.This statue may have represented Nero as the sun god Sol, as Pliny saw some resemblance. Pliny the Elder, however, puts its height at only 30.3 m (106.5 RF). Nero also commissioned from the Greek Zenodorus a colossal 35.5 m (120 RF) high bronze statue of himself, the Colossus Neronis. Suetonius describes the complex as “ruinously prodigal” as it included groves of trees, pastures with flocks, vineyards and an artificial lake - rus in urbe, “countryside in the city”.

Some scholars place it at over 300 acres (1.2 km2), while others estimate its size to have been under 100 acres (0.40 km2).

Though the Domus Aurea complex covered parts of the slopes of the Palatine, Esquiline, and Caelian hills, with a man-made lake in the marshy bottomlands, the estimated size of the Domus Aurea is an approximation, as much of it has not been excavated. When the edifice was finished in this style and he had dedicated it, he deigned to say nothing more in the way of approval than that he was at last beginning to be housed like a human being. Statue of a muse in the newly reopened Domus Aurea.

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