Great Fire of Rome

In July AD 64 a fire broke out among the shops around the Circus Maximus in Rome and burned for six days, then flared up again for three more. By the time it was out, ten of the city's fourteen districts had been damaged or destroyed. The disaster came under the emperor Nero, who was suspected of starting it, and, according to the historian Tacitus, he blamed the city's Christians and had many of them put to death.

Fires were a constant hazard in Rome, whose crowded neighbourhoods were packed with closely built apartment blocks along narrow streets. Several earlier blazes had damaged major public buildings, including one at the Circus Maximus in AD 36. Augustus had created a night watch, the vigiles, in AD 6, and by Nero's day there were thousands of them. Their tools, however, were simple: buckets, blankets, vinegar and the demolition of buildings to create firebreaks. The city's nine aqueducts had not been designed for firefighting.

According to Tacitus, the fire started on the night of 18 to 19 July in shops storing flammable goods at the end of the Circus near the Palatine and Caelian hills. Strong winds carried the flames along the length of the Circus and into the low-lying district beyond, where there were no temples or open spaces to halt them, and then up the slopes of the hills. Residents fled first to unburned quarters and then into the fields outside the city. Tacitus reports that gangs threw torches and obstructed firefighters, claiming to be acting on orders, though they never said whose; some may simply have been looters. Modern experiments suggest that a fire of this size can generate its own winds and carry embers far ahead, which may explain reports of new fires breaking out at a distance.

After six days the blaze seemed to be under control, but it broke out again and burned for another three. Three districts were entirely levelled, seven left with only a few ruined buildings, and four escaped. Losses included the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the House of the Vestals and Nero's own palace, the Domus Transitoria.

Nero was at his villa in Antium, about 35 miles away, when the fire began. He returned, arranged food supplies and opened public buildings and gardens to the homeless. He then issued new building rules for the reconstruction and laid out a new street plan, traces of which can still be seen. He also began a vast new residence, the Domus Aurea or Golden House, over a large area of the burned centre. To pay for the rebuilding his government raised taxes, particularly in the provinces, and reduced the gold and silver content of the coinage.

The speed with which Nero built his new palace fed rumours that he had set the fire to clear the land, although much of it already belonged to him. The surviving accounts, by Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, all written later, offer differing stories, including the famous claim that the emperor sang while the city burned. Tacitus, the most detailed and generally most reliable of them, hints at Nero's guilt without directly accusing him. The fire may well have been an accident, the almost inevitable result of an overcrowded city poorly equipped to fight large fires.

Tacitus writes that, to deflect the rumours, Nero accused the Christians of Rome, who were arrested and killed in cruel spectacles, some torn apart by dogs and others crucified. Later Christian writers named Nero as the first emperor to persecute their faith but did not link this to the fire, so some historians question whether Tacitus connected two separate events. Christians would face far larger persecutions later, culminating in the Diocletianic Persecution.

Our 100 map shows the Roman Empire a generation after the fire, with Rome at its centre in modern Italy.