garden. Lucullus is memorialized with a strain of Swiss chard. Later history These gardens became the favorite playground of Claudius' Empress Messalina (after she forced the current owner, Valerius Asiaticus, to commit suicide – Tac. Annals XI.1), and was the site of her murder in 48 AD on the orders of the Emperor Claudius, her husband. From shortly afterwards, in around 55 AD, mosaics excavated in the gardens have provided the earliest known use of tesserae made with the technique of gold sandwich glass, which was to remain an essential component of Byzantine and Western mosaics. In the 16th century they were owned by Felice della Rovere, daughter of Pope Julius II. The Villa Borghese portion was a vineyard in 160–5, when it was returned to be a grand garden. See also Roman gardens Notes References Conventi, A et al., "SEM-EDS analysis of ancient gold leaf glass mosaic tesserae. A contribution to the dating of the materials", OP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering Volume 32 conference 1, 2012, A Conventi, E Neri, and M Verità. IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 32 012007 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/32/1/012007, paper online von Stackelberg, Katharine T. "Performative Space and Garden Transgressions in Tacitus' Death of Messalina," American Journal of Philology 130.4 (2009) 595–624. External links Horti Luculliani, in A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, 1929. (on LacusCurtius) Gardens of Lucullus at Rome Reborn Digital Project, University of Virginia Buildings and structures completed in the 1st century BC Lucullus Persian gardens in Italy Rome Q. III Pinciano