Horti Sallustiani — Aula Adrianea

The address is Piazza Sallustio 21, 00187 Rome — the address given both by Roma Capitale's tourism portal and on the site's own website. Italian Wikipedia calls piazza Sallustio a square of the rione, and the centre of it, with the remains of the Horti Sallustiani from which the rione takes its name still visible there.

Roma Capitale's account: the land had been Julius Caesar's and was bought by the historian Sallust in 44 BC. It passed into imperial ownership under Tiberius; Vespasian liked to stay there and Nerva died there; there was further work under Hadrian and under Aurelian, who added a hippodrome he rode in. The gardens were badly damaged in the invasion of 410 and never rebuilt.

What survives at piazza Sallustio, 14 metres below street level, is a three-part complex. The principal element is a large circular domed hall, which the portal compares to the Serapeum of Hadrian's Villa, with niches in its walls, two of them opening into side rooms that may have been nymphaea; a glazed opening in the modern cocciopesto floor lets you look down at the hall's foundation. Behind it stands a semicircular multi-storey residential building with frescoed rooms, mosaic floors and windows, and a wide north stair once led to upper floors that have vanished. In 1998 the Soprintendenza approved a recovery project for the Aula Adrianea, to bring it back into use for cultural events and conferences.

Access, which is the question everybody asks: the Aula is run as a private venue for hire. Its own website advertises corporate events, conferences and meetings, receptions, gala dinners, fashion shows, art exhibitions, music events and photographic and film shoots, and offers an enquiry form rather than opening hours; no public opening hours and no admission price are published. Enquiries: 06 4201 1597, or eventi@hortisallustiani.it. The site's footer carries the copyright of Tecno Holding S.p.A. One warning worth carrying: the venue's site is hortisallustiani.it, without a hyphen. The hyphenated horti-sallustiani.it is a parked domain offered for sale, and it is what OpenStreetMap has tagged as the site's website. Do not cite the hyphenated domain as the venue's official site.

Provenance, from the same Roma Capitale page, and provenance only: the Dying Gaul, the Suicidal Gaul, the Ludovisi Throne and the obelisk that now stands above the Spanish Steps all came out of the Horti. None of them is in Sallustiano today, and none of the museums that hold them is written up in this guide.