ROMAN HOMES

KINDS OF HOMES
 Domus – a house in the city for wealthy Romans
 Villa – a country estate for especially rich Romans
 Insulae – apartments in the city with regular rent charges for less
wealthy, more common Romans

 Romans with enough money to afford their own place to live also
had houses, but they did not follow the typical floor plan of a
domus. Instead, they pretty much stuck to the basics. The
important thing was that they were not in cramped insulae.
DOMUS FLOOR PLAN
These are examples of a Roman domus floor plan. Not every
domus followed the same floor plan, so some elements from one
may be missing in another. Rich Romans often copied Greek plans,
leading to many of these design elements, which changed through
time. We will discuss the various rooms beginning on the left of the
plans and working our way to the right. The very left of the plan is
where the house connects to the street.
TABERNAE (#1 ON NOTES)
Instead of having a front lawn, wealthy Romans with a domus
would have at least two tabernae – shops built into their houses!
These could be run by the family or by one of its clients (someone
indebted to the family). These tabernae were on either side of the
entrance way, but did not connect to the rest of the house.

Tabernae also appeared in

apartments and most markets,
most often frequented by
Roman freedmen. They were
typically only one room.
IANUA & VESTIBULUM/FAUCES (#2)
The house itself was sealed off from the street by a door called an
ianua. The inset between the street and the door, if there was one,
was called the vestibulum. Through the door, a narrow hallway
called the fauces led into the house. Decorations here might show off
the owner’s wealth.

A set of fauces is literally the jaws or throat, so the narrowness

must have reminded the Romans of this. This is where we get the
English word faucet. The narrowness would serve to funnel intruders
or hide the splendor of the home until one entered the atrium.
ATRIUM (#3)
The room where the host would greet the guest was called the
atrium. This was the main room of the house, with a hole in the
ceiling. Originally, the family kept a fire here and needed a hole for
the smoke. The soot on the ceiling turned it ater or black, naming the
room.
ATRIUM CONT’D (#3)
 In later times, the hole in the roof – the compluvium – was sloped
inwards. Rainwater would then fall into the atrium and collect in
the impluvium. This was both aesthetically pleasing and a great
source of water.
CUBICULUM (#4)
Multiple cubicula could be found on either side of the atrium.
Deeper in the house, they might also be found around the
peristylium. These had many uses, perhaps as libraries or meeting
rooms, giving us the English cubicle. The most well-known use of
the cubiculum was as a bedroom. Some rooms were lavishly
decorated, but many simply had a bed and a chest for storage.
CUBICULUM CONT’D (#4)

On the floorplans shown earlier, each C is a

cubiculum. Remember that slaves might also be
part of the family, and need a place to sleep! This
and the many uses for cubicula explain the number
of them.
ALAE (#5)
The alae, or wings, were two niches extending off to either side of
the atrium. They often had religious purposes like storing the
imagines, busts of the homeowner’s ancestors. They might also be
home to the hearth (the fire for the house) or the Lararium, where the
spirits of the household gods (the Lares) would reside. The Lararium
could be set into the wall, a
standalone shrine, or attached to the wall.
CULINA (#6)
Based on the English word culinary, you might have guessed
correctly that this was the Roman kitchen. This was a dark room,
filled with smoke because there was no chimney. If the family was
wealthy enough to have a domus, then they could also afford slaves
to cook instead of the mother. Slaves used ovens to cook and to keep
dishes warm.
TRICLINIUM (#7)
The triclinium was a dining room composed of three couches on
which to recline, and the name comes from the Greek for 3 couches.
These were arranged in a U shape, and one’s status in the household
or in society determined his or her seating. Diners would lie down on
their left sides facing the middle. These rooms were often lavishly
decorated to show off wealth to guests. Some houses had more than
one, with different sizes for different sized parties.
Sometimes an extra triclinium was
outside to enjoy good weather.
TABLINUM (#8)
The tablinum was the office or study
of the master of the house. It was found
between the culina and the triclinium,
and it connected the atrium and front
half of the house to the peristylium and
back half of the house. The room was
decorated with images of the family,
and here the head of the house met with
his clients to discuss business.
PERISTYLIUM (#9)
The peristylium (or peristyle) was a courtyard build into the back
of the house. Columns surrounded it, and the center of the courtyard
typically had a walkway and a garden. Fountains might also adorn
the area. This was all for a mostly aesthetic purpose, and another way
to show off the owner’s wealth. Nearby might be a few more
cubicula.
HORTUS (#10)
The back of the house often housed a hortus, or garden. These
would range in size depending on the owner’s wealth – i.e. how
much land he could buy in the city. Slaves would tend the gardens
and grow foods to feed the family or to sell in the tabernae. Like any
garden the hortus could also play an aesthetic role, making the house
more beautiful.
EXEDRA (#11)
The exedra was a small recess in the back of the house near the
hortus or peristylium. Here, family members could converse with
each other or with guests while enjoying the weather. It was adapted
from a semi-circular Greek structure where orators and philosophers
would hold speeches or dialogues with other citizens.
DECORATIONS
The more decorations, the richer a guest could tell the host was.
These took several shapes: columns in the atrium and peristylium,
paintings on the walls, gold and other precious minerals on the walls
and furniture, and most commonly mosaics. Mosaics are a collection
of small stones of different colors on the floor, arranged to make a
pattern or a picture. The right one tells the observant passerby to
beware of the dog:
VILLA
This kind of home was reserved for the wealthiest Romans. It was
a country townhouse and often the center of a latifundium, or large-
scale farming estate. It was larger than any personal residence could
be in the city due to the open land, and often had so many slaves that
some slaves had to be in charge of others. Some incorporated
elements of the domus, but all were on a much larger scale.
INSULAE
Insulae, literally islands, were apartments in the city for those too
poor to own their own house. Many freedmen lived in these, and
everyone who did paid rent. These intermingled with the domus of
the rich, as there were no set neighborhoods. The bottom floor was
reserved for tabernae, while the upper floors (up to six or seven)
housed the residents. The largest apartments were on the 2nd floor,
and smallest on the top.