Roman town houses

The domus was the town house of the Roman upper classes and some wealthy freedmen, found in almost all the major cities of the Roman world during the Republic and the Empire. The richest families often owned a country house as well, the villa, which was generally much grander and stood on more land. Most people in the cities lived elsewhere: in crowded rented apartment blocks, the insulae.

A domus had few windows on the street and was arranged along an axis. From the entrance a visitor looked through the atrium to the tablinum, the owner’s office or reception room, and beyond it to the peristyle, a small garden with a columned walk. The atrium was the central hall, open to the sky over a shallow basin, the impluvium, that gathered rainwater. Around it opened the bedrooms, the triclinium where guests dined reclining on couches, and the kitchen. Shops sometimes faced the street without any door into the house.

The upper classes decorated their houses with marble, expensive paintings and frescoes, and the impluvium was often lined with marble and surrounded by a mosaic floor.