Four frescoed rooms in Augustus' House on Rome's Palatine Hill are to open to the public for the first time in March, officials said Monday.
Guided tours of the ''splendid'' frescoes will be covered by a new single ticket offering access to the Roman Forums, the Colosseum and the Palatine, Rome Archaeological Superintendent Angelo Bottini said.
The rooms, as well as a small study above them, were found in the 1970s.
They were in a particularly fragile condition and have only now been restored to their original state, Bottini said.
Experts believe they were part of a smaller house below the ruins of Augustus' sprawling imperial palace - the house he lived in when he was still just Julius Caesar's adoptive son Octavian and not Rome's first emperor.
Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli called the opening of the rooms ''an extraordinary event, the fruit of decades of work which has been possible thanks to state funds but also funding from private bodies like the World Monument Fund''.
Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said recent archaeological work in Rome had boosted tourism by as much as 40%.
''There are doubtless more surprises in store,'' the mayor added, saying ''this city is a treasure trove''.
Augustus' House has been revealing new finds for years but most of the digs are off-limits to visitors.
Last month archaeologists said they had found a grotto deep beneath the palace which could turn out to be the shrine where Ancient Romans worshipped the founders of the city, Romulus and Remus.
