Rome, Italy, March 9, 2007—A mostly empty room from the palace of Augustus Caesar reveals the relative modesty of Rome's first emperor.

Crowds gathered on Rome's Palatine Hill on March 9 to witness the reopening of the palace to tourists. The site had been undergoing a painstaking and laborious restoration since shortly after its discovery in the 1970s.

Augustus—also known as Octavian—was the great-nephew of Julius Caesar. Though he seized power during a bloody civil war and led Rome through one of its most influential periods, he was known for being relatively unostentatious in his private life.

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