📍House of Augustus, Palatine Hill, 00186 Rome, Italy
36 BC – 14“I was born Gaius Octavius into a well-to-do family from Velletri, and my great-uncle Julius Caesar made me his heir in his will. After his murder I fought my way to power and became Rome's first emperor. Yet I chose to live modestly, in a house on the Palatine Hill that was plain compared with the palaces later emperors built there. For more than forty years I slept in the same small bedroom, winter and summer, though Rome's winters did my health no good. When I wanted to work undisturbed, I climbed to a small room at the top of the house that I called Syracuse, or my little workshop. The walls were painted with delicate frescoes — the rooms are now known by their motifs, the Room of the Masks, the Pine Room, the Room of Perspectives. My wife Livia had her own house next door, and a country villa at Prima Porta where my famous marble statue was later found. I liked to wear clothes woven by the women of my household. I boasted that I found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today