page_title: Flavian Palace
section_title: Banquet Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Flavian Palace / Layout / Banquet Hall
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Cenatio iovis e casina farnese nei fori imperiali di Roma
context_page_description: The Flavian Palace, normally known as the Domus Flavia, is part of the vast Palace of Domitian on the Palatine Hill in Rome. It was completed in 92 AD by Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus, and attributed to his master architect, Rabirius.
  The term Domus Flavia is a modern name for the northwestern section of the Palace where the bulk of the large "public" rooms for official business, entertaining and ceremony are concentrated. Domitian was the last of the Flavian dynasty, but the palace continued to be used by emperors with small modifications until the end of the empire.
  It is connected to the domestic wing to the southeast, the Domus Augustana, a name which in antiquity may have applied to the whole of the palace.
context_section_description: The cenatio or Banquet Hall is on the southwest side of the peristyle and is the 2nd largest room in the Palace. Like the Aula Regia, it was extravagantly decorated, with several tiers of columns in exotic marbles and a frieze. From the cenatio guests could look out through large windows onto the peristyle lake and fountain or onto two courtyards at the sides with elaborate oval marble fountains surrounded by yellow Numidian marble columns. The centre of the southern wall of the hall has an apse surrounded by two passages which allow access to the library of the temple of Apollo. The floor of the hall is covered with marble dating from the early 4th century though the hypocaust beneath dates from the 120's  (Hadrian). This heating system suggests that this hall served as a banqueting hall in the winter and has been identified with the Cenatio Iovis mentioned in ancient literary sources.
  The cenatio is built upon two earlier versions both built by Nero as part of his palace, dating from before (the Domus Transitoria) and after (the Domus Aurea) the Great Fire of Rome in 64, similar in layout to the upper floor, and which are mostly still intact under the later floor. Also the exquisite marble floors of the fountains belong to Nero's palace. It comprises a superb design of flowers and climbing plants using red and green Porphyry, Numidian yellow and red, and Phrygian white and yellow. The border is of panels of pink-grey Chian marble framed in green Porphyry.
  
  The poet Statius, a contemporary of Domitian, described the splendour of the Flavian Palace in Silvae, IV, 2: 
  Awesome and vast is the edifice, distinguished not by a hundred columns but by as many as could shoulder the gods and the sky if Atlas were let off. The Thunderer’s palace next door gapes at it and the gods rejoice that you are lodged in a like abode […]: so great extends the structure and the sweep of the far-flung hall, more expansive than that of an open plain, embracing much enclosed sky and lesser only than its master.
  This room is usually identified as the Cenatio, but it could possibly be the Aula Regia, which was distinguished by its number of columns.
caption: Marble floor border of Cenatio
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