Starting from 40 B.C. the Horti Sallustiani, perhaps the most famous among the great parks of ancient Rome, began to take shape in a section of suburban Rome lying between the Quirinal and the Pincian hills. The Horti were created at the request of the historian G. Sallustius Crispus, who retired here, disgusted with political life. They were inherited by Tiberius in 21 A.D. and remained Imperial property up to the 5th century.
Over this vast span of time the decoration and statuary were continuously renovated and rearranged, which explains the great wealth of sculpture that has been found in the area once occupied by these gardens. The heart of the park was a narrow valley, now entirely submerged by nineteenth-century buildings, closed off on one side by a grandiose three-storey residential edifice whose remains, dating from the early 2nd century A.D., can still be seen in today’s Piazza Sallustio.
