National Roman Museum - Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

This guide to the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome tells the story of April 30, 1863, when workers excavating a Roman estate broke into a sealed underground room and found four walls painted floor to ceiling with an impossibly perfect garden. It follows the room back to Livia Drusilla, wife of the Emperor Augustus, who had it built as a cool summer dining hall, and the fruit trees, flowers and birds the artists packed into a single frozen season. Among all those birds, one sits alone in a gilded cage, and no one has ever explained why.