Open to the public for the first time this week are four rooms from the house of Emperor Augustus in Rome (scroll down the link for more images of "la casa di Augusto"). Classicist Mary Beard gives further fascinating details. Augustus lived in a house not a palace. However, his house on the Palatine hill "somehow linked directly to the temple of Apollo" which he had built. Thus, he could hold receptions "at home" in and around the temple, and by so doing, link himself to Apollo.