![]() Exquisitely preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., these architectural remains provide us with stunning insight into the domestic patterns of Romans in Italy in the first century A.D. Īccording to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “When one thinks of Roman housing, images of the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum typically come to mind. The proportion of these might vary with the size and shape of the lot at the builder’s disposal, and the number of rooms added would depend upon the means and tastes of the owner, but the kernel, so to speak, was always the same. The Roman was naturally conservative-he was particularly reluctant to introduce foreign ideas-and his house preserved in general certain main features essentially unchanged. At the same time it must be understood that the Roman house as we find it does not show as many distinct types as does the American house of the present time. Harold Whetstone Johnston wrote in “The Private Life of the Romans”: Vitruvius, an architect and engineer of the time of Caesar and Augustus, “says that the house should be suitable to the station of the owner, and that different styles of houses are appropriate in different parts of the world, according to the climate. Excavations of homes often reveal evidence of the threshing of cereals to make grains edible. Families often lived in fairly cramped space with their slaves and servants, They often processed crops at home. ![]() The openings of the house faced inward towards the courtyard rather than outward towards the street and other buildings. Many Roman and Greek homes, whether they belonged to rich city dwellers or poor farmers, were built around a courtyard. ![]() Much of what is known about Roman houses comes from the study of dwelling at Pompeii. A major structural change was the introduction of the peristyle garden around the 2nd century B.C. The oldest known domus dates to the end of the 4th century B.C. These large, comfortable dwellings were often big enough to accommodate the owner’s business, library, kitchen, pool, and garden. Single-family houses known as domus were primarily for the wealthy. In Rome, the urban poor tended to live in communal housing known as insula.
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