to the end of the 11th century, which has been printed from the original of Cencius Camerarius,[30] we read—“When the emperor is crowned in St. Peter, he and the empress proceed to the _palatium Romanum_, the emperor entering the apartment of Augustus, and the empress that of Livia.” These apartments are correct and have been found, and the statement shows that they were inhabited. Some fifty years ago a French dealer in works of art made excavations there, on which occasion many things are said to have been found, but the place was pillaged in a most disgraceful manner. Traces of a magnificence appeared which surpass all our conceptions: the walls of the rooms were covered with silver plate, and large pieces of silver texture served as tapestry; in other palaces the walls were covered with ordinary tapestry (_aulaea_), but here silver was employed instead. The treasures among the ruins were so numerous, that even after the pillage some things still remained. There are, properly speaking, only two streets in ancient Rome, which are known as such, namely, the _Via Sacra_ and the _Subura_. The former began at the ridge, which extended from the Palatine to the Esquiliae, and was called _Velia_, known as the place where the house of P. Valerius Poplicola stood; from this Velia it ran across the Forum, and on the other side of the Palatine, the form of which is almost square, it turned towards the boundary line between the Roman and the Sabine town. We know from Varro, that in the language of ordinary life only the first part of the street, namely, that on the Velia, bore the name of Via Sacra. The buildings by which it was lined were by no means splendid; the houses which have been dug out are very small, and no person of rank lived there; but, at the same time, it was the street through which the processions passed, and there were a great many statues in it. The street, as I said before, began at the height; it passed between the temples of Venus and Peace, and had several triumphal arches. At the point where it touched the Forum there stood the _fornix Fabianus_. It is possible that it may have been the custom, even in early times, to make temporary arches of foliage on the occasion of a triumphal procession; but the first arch made of stone was that for the triumph of Q. Fabius Allobrogicus. The arches still existing are those of Titus, Septimius Severus, and that of Constantine, which is entirely composed of stolen basreliefs; but there were many more, as, for example, two of Trajan, one of Valentinian and another of Gratian. They stood in the street of the Ponte St. Angelo, and existed as late as the middle ages; their inscriptions are preserved in copies.