Table of Content
The traditional elite and the very wealthy lived in domus, large single-family residences, but the two kinds of housing were intermingled in the city and not segregated into separate neighborhoods. The ground-level floor of the insula was used for tabernae, shops and businesses, with the living space upstairs. Like modern apartment buildings, an insula might have a name, usually referring to the owner of the building. The domus and the insula both became very popular housing for the patricians and plebeians alike.
The back part of the house was centred around the peristyle much as the front centered on the atrium. The peristylium was a small garden often surrounded by a columned passage, the model of the medieval cloister. Surrounding the peristyle were the bathrooms, kitchen and summer triclinium. The kitchen was usually a very small room with a small masonry counter wood-burning stove.
Housing and Homes
Frescoes were cheaper and easier to make than mosaics, as frescoes were painted on plaster, which was much easier to incorporate into a building than cement. Frescoes brought color to otherwise plain walls and ceilings. In most Roman homes, there was also a shrine to a patron deity. In domus, the shrine was typically located in the atrium, the focal point of the house. Within the city of ancient Rome, the wealthiest Romans, such as Emperors and noblemen lived in a single storey house, called a domus. These homes were very grand indeed, with marble pillars, statues, mosaics and wall paintings.
In the centre was a square roof opening called the compluvium in which rainwater could come, draining inwards from the slanted tiled roof. Little of the original architecture survives; only a single multi level section of the vast complex remains. Even in its original state, however, the House of Livia and Augustus is not a good representation of a typical domus, as the home belonged to one of Rome's most powerful, wealthy and influential citizens. In contrast, homes in Pompeii were preserved intact exactly as they were when they were occupied by Roman people 2000 years ago. In the older parts of the city the rich could not build out, so they built up. Roman architecture made use of arches, vaulting, and concrete to enable interior space to be much larger in its buildings.
Country Villas Beyond Ancient Rome
Several Roman emperors even passed laws restricting the height to which insulae could be built. Insulae were inhabited by the poorer elements of Roman society, but there were exceptions. Some insulae were lavishly decorated and treated the same way a modern-day penthouse might be. The word dom in modern Slavic languages means "home" and is a cognate of the Latin word, going back to Proto-Indo-European. Along with a domus in the city, many of the richest families of ancient Rome also owned a separate country house known as a villa.
These buildings were obviously intended as low cost high quality housing for an increasingly rich middle class present in Ostia at the time as the port of Ostia was itself enlarged and improved. The plans of these buildings show a great deal of thought for use of space and functionality. Roman houses developed into highly sophisticated buildings. Thegreat fire of Romeduring the reign ofEmperor Nerois said to have burned down the greater part of these slums in order to make way for his enormous palace called “the Golden House” orDomus Aurea. The focus on the impluvium lost its importance in favour of the more open space of the garden beyond. In this image it is similar to an ‘impluvium’ which would be a pool for capturing rain water from inclined roof sections within the atrium.
Palaces and the homes of emperors
KImpluviumA shallow rectangular section dug a little into the ground of the atrium to collect the rainwater which fell in through thecompluvium. Building techniques allowed the atrium to grow in size through the use of more complex joists or columns. The compluvium could be built and decorated in numerous ways, particularly as the size increased the use of pillars increased. The “tuscan” type of atrium ceiling was the most ancient and expensive since it avoided the use of pillars and as such required particularly large beams.
Insulae and domus were as varied as modern suburban houses and apartment buildings. Despite their diversity, there were design elements common to all Roman homes. Domus had few windows, but large openings in the roof of some rooms, allowing natural light into the house. Insulae were often constructed around courtyards, where light could reach most of the living spaces in the building. When it rained, water was funneled into drains located in the floors.
Ancient Rome
Due to this reason, temporary residences were needed for the soldiers in the form of leather tents occupied by multiple soldiers at the same time. While in Rome, the soldiers lived in modest homes but generals had large houses just like the wealthy Romans. Most of the generals hailed from the aristocratic class and also possessed countryside villas.
Those in the garden would be made of brick and then plastered or covered in marble. Those in the house itself would generally be made of wood.The couches would be set around a table called “mensa”. The leftmost couch was reserved for the master of the house, his wife and one of his sons or in the absense of a son for one of his liberti.
Prior to this, ancient Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Etruscan architecture relied on heavy support on the interior of buildings which meant small rooms and limited design on the interior. The insulae had shops that would face the street, bakeries, taverns, workshops, etc. There was a lot of traffic on the street, horse or donkey carriages, people rich and poor walking, etc. The workers or the owners would live above and behind these shops. During the early days of Roman Republic, the wife was not allowed to appear in public but this changed as time passed.
Villas were largely open to the air, and stone benches and tables were common. Wooden furniture has not survived, but bronze hardware for such furniture is well-known. A "villa ubana" was a villa that was fairly close to Rome and could be visited often.
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