Imperial Palace, Portus
About
A three-story administrative and residential complex on the east side of Portus's hexagonal harbor basin, built for imperial visits and the officials who ran Rome's grain supply. Brick stamps date construction to 112-120 CE, so building was still underway across the site's roughly two hectares when Trajan died in August 117. Some of those stamped tiles carry the name of Plotina, Trajan's wife, which is how archaeologists came to nickname the building the 'Imperial Palace' in the first place. Renovations continued into Hadrian's reign and beyond. The University of Southampton's Portus Project, led by Simon Keay and Graeme Earl, began excavating the complex in 2007, uncovering marble-clad rooms and a monumental hemicycle at its eastern edge.
What happened here
The public rooms are enormous and the private ones are not. A visitor is walked through an audience hall built to make him feel small, waits with everyone else, and is admitted in order of usefulness. Behind that front, the household runs on hundreds of slaves and freedmen with narrow specialities — one for the lamps, one for the silver, one who remembers names. The kitchens are far from the dining rooms, so food arrives warm at best. Business never stops: petitions from provincial towns, judicial appeals, dispatches read aloud while the emperor is being shaved. Gardens and fountains take up as much ground as the buildings, because being able to waste that much space in a crowded city is the point.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →