The blaze started among shops selling flammable goods near the Circus Maximus and swept through Rome's densely packed insulae, ultimately gutting ten of the city's fourteen districts. Nero, who was at his villa in Antium, returned to organize relief efforts, but the rumor persisted that he had started the fire to clear land for his planned Domus Aurea. He famously deflected blame onto Rome's Christian community, launching one of history's first state-sponsored persecutions.
For six days and seven nights, flames tore through Rome's crowded wooden tenements, moving so fast that residents had little time to save anything but their lives. By the time it was contained, three of Rome's fourteen regions were completely leveled and seven more badly damaged. The historian Tacitus, writing decades later, could not say for certain how the fire started, but he recorded the popular belief that Nero wanted the land for himself.
The legend of Nero "fiddling while Rome burned" is almost certainly false — the fiddle didn't exist yet, and Nero was miles away when the fire began. What's better documented is his response afterward: he opened his gardens to the homeless, organized food distribution, and then, sensing the public's suspicion, blamed Christians, subjecting them to grotesque public executions to redirect anger.
Out of the ashes rose the Domus Aurea, Nero's opulent "Golden House," complete with a revolving dining room and a 30-meter bronze statue of himself. The extravagance only deepened suspicions about his motives and hastened his fall from power four years later.