Domus Aurea reopens with crowdfunding

(refiling with corrected spelling of Aurea).
    (ANSA) - Rome, October 27 - Emperor Nero's fabled Domus Aurea (Golden House) reopened Sunday after the latest in a string of closures to make it safe from collapse.
    The new opening was partly funded by Sky Italia, which on November 1 is showing a documentary on the ancient pleasure palace whose frescoes inspired curious Renaissance greats like Raphael and led to the coinage of the word 'grotesque'.
    The Domus Aurea's upkeep against subsidence and water infiltration will also be financed by one of Italy's first cases of cultural crowdfunding, Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said at the inauguration.
    "This is an innovative way of protecting our glittering cultural heritage," he said, adding that the Domus "encapsulates the splendour of history".
    Franceschini also urged other media companies to follow Sky's lead in funding art sites.
    "Do what Sky is doing and even more," he said.
    "You are really spoiled for choice in helping the Italian cultural world to enhance its great patrimony," he said in an open invitation to TV and film companies, citing the Colosseum restoration backed by shoe king Diego Della Valle.
    Father Reginald Foster, one of the world's leading Latin scholars, commented on the reopening by noting that Nero, of the 'fiddling while Rome burns' legend, had had an "extremely bad press".
    The young emperor, Foster said, was "a child genius with a high reputation for his gift for languages".
    "He was also renowned for his skill as a gladiator and for his mastery as an artist and musician. "By the time of his death, as the first emperor to commit suicide, when he was 45," Fr Foster said, the poor man was burnt out!". The new visits to the Golden House, which is still undergoing massive maintenance and restoration, last an hour and are rigorously reservation-only.