The House of the Griffins, one of the most significant luxury homes on Romes Palatine hill to survive from the Republican era, is opening to the public for the first time since its discovery more than a century ago with a livestreamed on-site video tour. Visitors will stay in the atrium while a guide equipped with a video camera descends into the rooms below. The live video and audio will be shown on a state-of-the-art micro-perforated mesh covering on the wall.It was discovered in 1912 by archaeologist Giacomo Boni, director of the excavations of the Roman Forum. The house was named after one particularly notable decorative accent in a semi-circular lunette atop a wall: two white stucco griffins facing each other against a rich red background. The imagery was of Greek mythological origin, telegraphing the owners education and wealth. The frescoes on the wall are some of the most elaborate extant examples of late Republican decoration, featuring architectural illusions of colonnades, pilasters and marble inlays. The mosaic floors are fields of black and white tiles with multi-colored panels of three dimensional shapes in marble tiles.Built between the late 2nd and mid-1st century B.C., the domus is one of the oldest Republican-era structures on the Palatine. The top floors of it were destroyed by new construction during the Augustan era and today only the ground floor with remains of the atrium and a hypogeum floor below it have survived. Their vivid polychrome frescoed walls and mosaic floors are still remarkably intact, even after the massive foundations of the Flavian Palace constructed by Domitian intersected and disarticulated the original structure. Thats because the builders simply filled the surviving spaces with soil to act as support for the palace, preserving the fine decoration of the domus. As a result, the remains of the House of the Griffins offer a unique compendium of three centuries of architecture, art, alteration and neglect. However, the structure, damaged in antiquity, had gaps and falling plaster on the walls and mosaic floors of different heights. The hypogeum floor can only be accessed by a dangerously steep staircase. The domus therefore has fragile and complex conservation needs that make it as challenging to open to visitors as it is fascinating to visit. A comprehensive scientific restoration and stabilization project was completed in December 2024, and included injections of lime-based mortar to the walls, repair of painted surfaces, reinforcement of wooden structures, laser cleaning to remove deposits on the frescoes and figurative stucco, detailed 3D photogrammetric surveys and scientific studies of the decoration and structure. A new lighting and audio-visual system was install to enhance the live guided tour.This innovative approach makes the domus accessible to everyone, without subjecting the delicate environment to the stress of traffic. Tours will run every Tuesday, starting on March 3rd, 2026. Tickets can be purchased starting February 3rd from the Archaeological Park of the Colosseums website.