Roman Houses

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Roman Houses

• Ayesha Augustus
• Sharnique Beck
• Kitsen Cummings
• Anthony Harris

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Roman Houses
The main room in the house was the atrium, a
windowless room with a space in the ceiling (the
compluvium) through which rain fell into the
impluvium, a hollow space in the floor. There
were alcoves on either side of the atrium, called
alae, in which wax busts of ancestors were kept.
There were four types of atrium Tuscan (in which
the roof was supported by two pairs of beams that
crossed each other at right angles, tetrastylon
(in which four pillars supported the roof beams
at the corners of the compluvium), displuviatum
(in which the roof sloped to the out walls), and
testudinatum. Later the atrium was reduced to
being a reception room. The tablinum, the
master's office or study, was where the master
kept his arca (a heavy chest, sometimes chained
to the floor, containing money and valuables).
There were other rooms used for business
sometimes house owners converted front rooms into
shops. Sometimes larger houses had an open court
in front of the door, called a vesibulum, with an
ornamental pavement from the door to the street.

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Ostium included both the doorway and the door,
but fores and janua are more precise words for
the door itself. Doors opened inward outer doors
were provided with bolts and bars. In some houses
a doorman or janitor was kept on duty. Inside
houses, curtains were preferred to doors.
Sometimes mosaics adorned the threshold, reading
salve (good heath), nihil intret mali (may no
evil enter), or cave canem (beware of dog). Some
windows were provided with shutters, which slid
in a framework on the outer wall. If these were
in two parts, so that they moved in opposite
directions, they were said to be junctae
(joined). The peristylum was an open court at the
rear of the tablinum, planted with flowers,
trees, and shrubs. In upper class houses, the
peristyle was the center of household life. The
culina or kitchen was the most important of the
rooms about the peristyle. The dining room
(triclinium) was not always close to the kitchen
because slaves made carrying food fast and easy.
Roman houses generally had many cubicula - small,
scantily furnished sleeping rooms. There were
also cubicula diurna, used for rest in the
daytime (nighttime bedrooms were called cubicula
nocturna or dormitoria). In the houses of many
educated Romans there was a library
(bibliotheca), where papyrus rolls were kept in
cases or cabinets around the walls. There were
other rooms, in addition to these the sacrarium
(a room with a shrine), oeci (rooms for the
entertainment of large groups, exedrae(rooms
furnished with permanent seats, used for
entertainments), solarium (a sun deck), and
perhaps pantries, storerooms, and cellars. Roman
houses had various methods for heating. In severe
winter weather, portable stoves (braziers made of
metal for holding hot coals) were used. Wealthy
people sometimes had furnaces with chimneys. The
fire was under the house, and warm air circulated
in tile pipes or in hollow walls and floors
without coming directy into the rooms. This
heating arrangement was called a hypocaust, and
it was used by moth baths in Italy.
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Water was brought to houses by aqueducts from the
mountains, sometimes for a long distance.
Building materials in Rome varied greatly over
time. Wood was commonly used for temporary
structures. Permanent buildings were made of
stone and unburned brick from early times. Walls
of dressed stone were laid in regular courses.
Tuba from Latium, was a dull color, but could be
covered with fine white marble stucco to give it
a brilliant finish. For ordinary houses,
sun-dried bricks were largely used until the
beginning of the first century BC. These were
also covered with stucco. In classical time,
cement was invented. Walls built of this durable,
inexpensive material were called opus
caementicium. Cement was also combined with
crushed terra cotta to make a waterproof lining
(opus Signinum) for cisterns. Although concerte
walls were weatherproof, they were usually faced
with stone or burned bricks. Walls of this type
were called opus incertum (irregular work) if
they were faced with stones with no regular size
or shape, or opus reticulatum (network) if they
were faced with uniform tufa stones. Bricks used
for facing were triangular - no walls were built
of brick alone. The term for Roman floors was
pavimentum - a name which originally referred to
floors in small houses in which the ground in
each room was smoothed, covered thickly with
small pieces of stone, brick, tile or pottery,
and pounded down solidly and smoothly with a
heavy rammer. In better houses the floor was made
of stone slabs fitted smoothly together. More
elaborate houses had concrete floors, often with
a mosaic surfaces. In the upper stories floors
were made of wood, sometimes with a layer of
concrete on top. Roman roofs varied, with some
flat and some sloped. The earliest roof was a
thatch of straw, later replaced by shingles and
finally tiles. Before the end of the Republic,
the majority of the population lived in
apartments called insulae (islands), a name
originally applied to city blocks. These were
sometimes six or seven stories high. Augustus
limited their height to seventy feet Nero, after
the great fire in his reign, set a limit of sixty
feet. Apartments were build poorly and cheaply
and were often in danger of fire and collapse.
The building was looked after by an insularius, a
slave of the owner.
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In side theHouse

• The atrium was used as a formal entrance hall.
• The alas were wings/ openings from the atrium.
• The cubiculums were small rooms/ bedrooms.
• The culina was the kitchen
• The exedra was a small gardening room.
• The peristylium was the colonnaded garden.
• The taberna was the shop where the people made
  their products and then went to the market to
  sell them
• The tablinum was the office or study
• The triclinium was the dining room
• The vestibulum was another colonnaded garden but
  smaller.