Hi

,I don't expect to win this week's competition as my photographs lack artistic quality. Still, people might enjoy the story of the building within which I took them as a wonderful 'Lost and Found' tale.

The building is Emperor Nero's Domus Aurea (Golden House), a vast landscaped complex built by him in 64 CE on the Oppian Hill in the heart of ancient Rome.

Nero's probable aim was for the building, with its three hundred rooms, to be a prominent place of lavish entertainment. Around the house and covering up to three hundred acres were groves of trees, pastures with flocks of animals, vineyards, and an artificial lake.

Yet, all had disappeared within forty years of Nero's death. His imperial successors stripped the house of its marble, jewels, and ivory. Then, they filled it with earth before building over it. On the site of the lake, in the middle of what was once the grounds, Emperor Vespasian built the Colosseum.

The building's rediscovery wasn't until the 15th Century when a young Roman happened to fall through a hole near its site. Thinking they'd discovered some cave with painted figures covering the walls, they quickly told people of it once they clambered out.

It wasn't long before Rome's young artists, including Raphael and Michelangelo, dug holes near that first fall and let themselves down on boards knotted to ropes to sketch what they saw—in Raphael's case, inspiring some of his work in the Vatican.

Later, notorious visitors to Rome, such as Casanova and the Marquis de Sade, also scratched their autographs on the walls beside the paintings.

It's now an archaeological site (hence the hard hats), as excavation slowly reveals the faded glory of that once marvellous building. The people in the first photograph give some idea of the size and scale of once was. The second is an example of one of the wall paintings.