The Palatine Stadium was built into the eastern wing of Domitian’s palace at the end of the 1st century CE. It wasn’t meant for races but for the emperor’s private use — a long garden arena with fountains, sculptures and seating, designed for ritualised walks, small ceremonies and controlled displays of imperial presence. In the following centuries, it shifted roles: part of the Severan palace gardens, later a service zone under Constantine, then a fortified area in the Middle Ages, and finally a foundation for the Farnese gardens, which reshaped its terraces in the Renaissance. Medieval traditions mention processional use, while Renaissance antiquarians recorded statue fragments found here and added them to elite collections. Figures like Fulvio, Marcantonio Sabellico and artists from Raphael’s circle studied the ruins as they re-emerged from the soil.
Rome rises on seven hills, and this walk takes us across two of its most revealing ones — Esquiline and Palatine. The Esquiline, once the city’s eastern edge, still carries traces of imperial gardens, hidden nymphaea, magical gates, and traditions that survived the fall of the empire. The Palatine, the hill of the emperors, preserves stadiums, palaces, terraces and views where the entire history of Rome — Republic, Empire, Middle Ages, Baroque and modern Italy — lies in a single panorama. Along the way, we meet the monuments, streets and layers we uncovered in this journey: the baths of Trajan, the Domus Aurea beneath the grass, the Palatine stadium, the Forum’s arches and temples, and the buildings that reshaped Rome across two millennia. And we pause for something timeless: a pastry shop on the Esquiline that has kept its flavours unchanged for more than a century — a taste of Rome as constant as its stones.
