Fair on Tverskaya Square. Musical Forest on Pushkin Square

The architecture of ancient Rome was very diverse. This is evidenced by the remains of buildings found by archaeologists in various places where the Romans lived. And these findings indicate that the houses in ancient Rome were very different.

Building science was already sufficiently developed, and allowed the construction of multi-storey buildings. We will talk about such buildings in this article.

Why were high-rise buildings built in ancient Rome?

It is not surprising, but several thousand years ago there was already a real estate rental market, which is in many ways similar to the modern one. Accordingly, it was considered expedient to build Houses several floors to accommodate as many people as possible.

An interesting fact is that in one such house, the poorer layer of the population coexisted with the rich. They just lived on different floors.

Rich people in ancient Rome preferred to be located on the first floors - they were more comfortable and spacious. Very often, such premises were rented for trading shops.

The upper floors, which could be at least three, were settled by poor people who could not afford to pay a lot. Typically, these apartments and rooms had a small living area with low ceilings.

How much did it cost to rent a house in Ancient Rome?

Prices were exorbitant by the standards of those times. The inscription on the marble tombstone found by archaeologists says that death freed a person from the care of paying for housing. With an average income of one thousand sesterces a year for the poor, the price of a modest little room was about two thousand sesterces. As for the Senators, they could afford to rent a house within six thousand sesterces. In the suburbs, according to scientists, modest housing cost an average of five hundred sesterces.

How were ancient Roman houses built?

Such "profitable" houses were built mainly from rubble masonry, as well as burnt and dried bricks. Fired brick was of higher quality and more expensive. Therefore, to reduce the cost of construction, in most cases, dried bricks were used. Wood was used as partitions for the floors. The roof was tiled.

In some cases, marble was also used, but this, of course, is a pleasure for the rich and fastidious Romans.

Or the aforementioned but served under the house in Ancient Rome. It was tightly laid and filled with a mortar, which, by the way, was close in its properties to modern high-quality cement mixtures. Such cement mixtures were obtained by mixing lime-pozzolanic substances with slaked lime. It dried for a long time, but as a result it was distinguished by high moisture resistance and strength.

Due to poor quality construction work and materials, which was a frequent occurrence in the construction of profitable houses, collapses and fires occurred. And because of the too close location of houses to each other, there were large-scale fires. Apparently even then, the thirst for money was superior to elementary security measures.

This is how people lived in ancient Rome. They built houses, rented them out, and did not know grief. Approximately, everything is as it is now 😉

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Sergeenko M.E.

About 50 years ago, it was believed that the Pompeian house gives a true idea of the house of large Italian cities, of the Roman one in the first place. This idea was forced to abandon the excavations at Ostia. It is now known that there were two types of Italian houses: the mansion house, domus, and the hut, taberna - the dwelling of the poor. Both the genealogy of these houses and their character are very different. The Italian city mansion, where a noble and wealthy person lives, developed from a rustic manor of a simple original type, which is largely preserved even in the later villae rusticae, excavated near Pompeii.

This village estate is a rectangle, surrounded on all sides by buildings that are closely adjacent to one another, forming a solid wall around the courtyard, interrupted only where there was an entrance and an entrance. This place, of course, should be under special and constant supervision: housing is directly looking at it, where there is always one of the owners, most often, of course, the hostess busy with household chores.

In every household there are things that are good to have at hand, which are not worth keeping under lock and key, but which still need to be watched with the master's eye. In the old courtyard of a Ukrainian peasant, a place for such things was a three-walled, completely open barn on the fourth side. The Italian master had two such tales, and he arranged them next to his own room, so that it would not be customary to take what should not be and who should not. Above all the buildings - above the dwellings, above the stables and sheds - there was, according to the custom of the southern [p.58] countries, a canopy resting on pillars: this primitive portico protected both people and animals, and the very walls from the direct impact of rain and sun.

The villager, having moved to the city, brought there the usual layout of housing, but the city presented him with its own requirements. He was, above all, stingy with the place; usually molded on some kind of hill, squeezed by a tight belt of walls, the city protected every piece of land. The new city dweller had to reckon with this stinginess: if he wanted to keep in his new dwelling at least a small space for a flower garden - it was difficult for an Italian to live without flowers and greenery - he had to save on living space, and here the fact that a large yard in the city is not needed at all; turning it into a living space was both sensible and practical. A roof was built over the courtyard, in which a large opening was left: the newly created room (atrium) was supposed to remain for the rest of the housing the same as the courtyard was for the rural estate - a light well. The old master's room turned out to be a kind of deep niche, looking at the atrium: there remained the master's bed - lectus adversus ("bed against the doors"), so named for the place where it stood, and a loom, which soon, however, due to lack light in this room, moved further into the atrium itself. Nearby on both sides there were open rooms - the former povets, which received, or perhaps retained the old name of "wings" (alae), and behind them, on the other three sides of the atrium, there were, as before, rooms for various purposes 1 .

Acquaintance with Greece and its culture had the deepest influence on the whole life of the Romans. It turned out that being an impeccable servant of the state and an excellent master, cleverly and carefully multiplying your means, is not enough: you also need to read philosophers, be interested in questions of science and literature and discuss them with family and friends during leisure hours. It is enough to look at an old Italian house to see how little it is adapted for this personal and domestic life: it is all, so to speak, in people. If his master is prominent, if he is a magistrate or simply business man, then he will be in full view and in the hustle and bustle of the people all day long. Neither he nor his family [p.59] have anywhere to hide in their house, nowhere to hide from the roar of voices and the shuffling of soles. And when the conviction that he has the right to live for himself is firmly rooted in the mind of the owner of this house, he immediately takes up the alteration of his home.

The word "alteration", however, in this case is not quite suitable; the old house remains completely intact, only a new half, borrowed from the Hellenistic house, is added to it: the rooms of this half open onto porticos that surround a garden on two or three sides, always with a fountain and many flowers. Here is the focus of home, family life; women usually spend their time here; only the closest friends are admitted here, and the owner, having done away with all official duties and business, indulges here in that active leisure (otium), which the Romans so cherished and which they knew how to appreciate.

Let's dwell a little on the history of individual rooms.

There must be water in the village yard: a spring, a well, a cistern with rainwater; to water the cattle, to wash, to cook food - for all the primary needs, everyday and master's, it must be right there at hand. In the warm season (it lasts a long time in Italy), food was cooked in the yard, where a hearth was placed near the water or a portable brazier was placed. Near the hearth they knocked together a table on which food lay, there were dishes, and at which, in all likelihood, they dined.

Atrius, the direct heir of the court, kept all this equipment for a long time. Under the opening in the roof (it was called the compluvium), a shallow reservoir (impluvium) was arranged, where rainwater ran down from the four slopes of the opening facing inward. She was greatly valued: remember that there were no water pipes yet, digging wells was a difficult task, going to a river or a source was not always easy and convenient. Rainwater itself was given into the hands, it was only necessary to collect and save this precious moisture 2. From the impluvium, water flowed through pipes into a cistern arranged under the floor; it was scooped from there through a hole, which was made in the form of a low round well. There was also a drain: dirty and stagnant water was lowered through it into the street. Behind the impluvium, somewhat at a distance, they piled up the hearth in such a way that the fire would not be flooded with rainwater, but the smoke [p.60] would be pulled out. And the table, which we had already seen in the courtyard, remained in the atrium.

Atrium - also inherited from the old court - invariably retained the former large size. In the "Italian" half of the house, this is the largest room, which for a long time remained a place where the whole family gathered to dine, do housework, sit at leisure; here they sacrificed to Laram, here they kept a box with money. The loom stood in the atrium in the Old Testament families until the end of the republic 3 . If the house was generally the kingdom of the hostess, then the atrium became the place from where she ruled it, watching everything, losing sight of nothing, gathering the whole family around. Here she worked with her daughters and maids, doing yarn, weaving and other women's needlework. Here her husband and his friends caught Lucretia at the spindle, who unexpectedly rode to Rome from under the besieged Ardea to check what their wives were doing in their absence. . The image of the hostess, who at the hearth, together with her assistants, is “busy with wool”, has forever remained in the heart of the Italian as a symbol of domestic peace, contentment and comfort.

Time passed, customs changed, the whole appearance of the house and the purpose of its individual parts changed. Not a single room was affected by these changes as much as the atria. When a peristyle was added to the house, and a series of rooms appeared on its sides, the life of the family was concentrated in this half. A special place was assigned for cooking - the kitchen, the hearth was moved there, and often a niche was arranged there for the Lares. The loom was completely removed: "working in wool" ceased to be obligatory for the hostess. Atrius already in the 1st century. BC. turned into the most front and official room. The dimensions of the atrium are sometimes increased so much that columns are placed to support the roof, or four, one in each corner of the compluvium (atrium tetrastylum - "four-column atrium"), or even more: there were 16 columns in the house of Epidius Rufus in Pompeii. For some reason, such multi-column atria were called "Corinthian". Atria, in which the size of the compluvium was greatly reduced, sometimes turning it into a narrow gap and making the roof so that rainwater would flow out of it, were called atria displuviata.

In the atria they receive those visitors whom they do not want to introduce [p.61] into their family circle; here they conduct business conversations and talk on duty. Clients gather here, who are supposed to appear every morning to the patron to pay their respects to him. The epithets "proud", "arrogant" are now common for atria. From the furnishings of the old atrium, only the money box remained, and for a long time there was a table called the cartibulum - Varro remembered it in many Roman houses in his childhood.

The deep niche in the atrium, which replaced the master bedroom, was considered part of the atrium, and for a long time did not have a special name. Over time, the owners moved from this niche to separate bedrooms; the niche was called tablina (tablinum) and turned into the owner's office, where he kept business papers, family archives, and official documents 4 . The memory that this was once a room from which the hostess kept the whole house under surveillance is firmly preserved: as a rule, there are no doors in the tablina: it is separated from the atrium either by a curtain that can be pulled and pulled, or a low parapet.

To what extent the Italian house protected the heritage of the village court, this is especially clearly evidenced by the "wings" - former povets, very convenient in the everyday life of the village economy, useless in urban life and nevertheless preserved. In aristocratic Roman houses, images of ancestors were placed here, but if there were no images, then the owners definitely did not know what to do with these open rooms. In Pompeii, sometimes they put a closet here, sometimes they turn the "wing" into a pantry, embedding shelves in the walls, sometimes they arrange a chapel for the Lars here, sometimes they try to take it under the bedroom or dining room, but they almost never put doors.

Back in early December, I wrote a series of notes on my LiveJournal on one question sent to me. I was offered to repost in "Antique" - that's a crosspost.

Question: How interconnected were the processes of the origin of the ancient Roman domus and taberna from some original type of dwelling? And the result of the transformation of which of them was the appearance of insula?

Taberna, domus and insula in ancient Rome

In principle, the Romans had two types of ancient dwellings - a hut with roof slopes outward and an Etruscan-type house with slopes inside.

Italian house of the Etruscan type without taberns

In this Italian house, the sloping roofs point inward (compluvium), and the rainwater that runs off is collected in a small pool under a hole in the roof (impluvium) for later use. There is an assumption that the change in the direction of the slopes of the roofs of Italian houses was facilitated by the city with its conditions - with a close location of houses, it is more expedient to make them inside.

Here are the premises, which later the owners will give under the benches- taberns, perform the function of cubicle bedrooms. Then these rooms will be isolated from the interior of the house and will be rented out.

Italian house of the Etruscan type with taberns

Taberna- from the word "tabula", a board - was originally a small-sized dwelling, which served the owner as a house, as well as a workshop, and a shop for selling his products. Taberna could be two stories. There were at least one or two rooms on each floor in such a dwelling. It is clear that such a house has a "pedigree" from an Italian peasant hut - no spacious internal atriums or peristyles for you.

Tabern with back room

Word domus it is customary to designate the own mansion of a rich person, whether it is urban, rural - it does not matter. Such a house usually grows in width, and not in height (there can be a maximum of 3 floors), belongs to one clan (or family). It is a logical development of the Etruscan dwelling with an internal space around the hearth and with later additions of elements of the Hellenistic house.

Domus in Rome

Domus consisted of two parts - official, intended for public life, and private, family, closed from society.

isolated rooms in domus, overlooking the street, the owner could well use it himself or rent it out as taberns.

Domus with taberns

insula was born from a combination of several closely adjacent tabern. If it's easy to explain, then insula what we now call a quarter is called - several apartment buildings united by courtyards and limited along the perimeter by streets. However, in Roman reality, such a quarter usually consisted of one house, which had a small courtyard-"well" inside, into which the doors and stairs of all apartments went out. Besides, insula grew upwards without increasing comfort in existing rooms. If it belonged to one owner, then it served as a "profitable house". The cost of housing in such a house fell with altitude - the most top floor was also the cheapest. However, wealthy people also lived in such dwellings.

Insula in Rome (clickable image)

Insula in Ostia

Insula at Ostia, seen from the other side

Insula at Ostia, seen from above

However, domusi wealthy families could themselves occupy the entire insulu.

In addition to the dimensions of the interior, insula domus and insula tabernas differed greatly in the presence / absence of all kinds of amenities. Despite the great love of the Romans for water (the cities of Ancient Rome are known for a large number of fountains, thermae), the latter was freely available exclusively in public places. And although a third of the volume of water in Rome's water supply was allocated "for private use", obtaining permission to divert pipes into the house was not easy. Therefore, the owners of "profitable insul» did not bother with the arrangement of bathrooms and toilets in their possessions. Tenants simply poured sewage and slop on the streets of the city. Many domusi, in turn, could boast not only their own toilets, but also baths. With the heat in the houses, the situation was no better, since there was no central heating in Rome (the hypocaust system worked only in the baths), the premises in the houses, as in tabernacles, domus, as well as in insulakh heated with braziers.

Bronze brazier is not cheap

I will point out another insul tabern- real shopping malls.

The dwelling of the ancient Romans was of three types: insula, domus and villa.

Insula (from the Latin insula - an island, a separate building) is a multi-storey and apartment building in ancient Rome.

Pompeian houses were characteristic of provincial towns, where land was of little value. Most of the houses had one floor, the tallest had two. In Rome land there were roads and therefore they built multi-storey buildings with floors hanging in successive ledges above the street.

Houses in ancient Rome were separated from each other by a wall that ran between adjacent properties. After the fire of Rome, it was decided that each house should form an "island", separated from the next by a passage.

Rooms or apartments in the insula were rented out. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries. AD in Rome there were 46,602 such communal houses. In conditions of high cost of land plots, homeowners who rented out housing tried to build houses as high as possible. Reaching a height of 21.90 m, the houses had 4-5 floors.

They were usually built of baked bricks, and the upper floors had a wooden frame and concrete coverings. Each floor had its own stone staircase leading from the street; windows and balconies faced the street. The premises were usually located around the light courtyard, often occupying an entire block. A number of rooms were intended for singles, they had a separate exit to the street or were grouped around a corridor.

There were no amenities in cheap houses. The latrines were usually located in the courtyards.

Insulas for wealthier citizens included apartments with many rooms and certain amenities.

Roman houses, domuses (from the Latin word domus - house, dwelling, household), were built, apparently, under the influence of Greek houses with an atrium and peristyle. These were the houses of the Roman nobility, mansions. There could be taberns (shops, workshops) in the domus, part of the premises could be rented out.

The front, official part of the domus was the atrium, which could be entered through the protirum (entrance in the form of a recess in the wall of the corridor leading from the street to the doors of the house) and the vestibule (front courtyard), behind the atrium there was a peristyle surrounded by living quarters. Between the atrium and the peristyle was the tablinum (owner's office), next to the atrium were the winter and summer triclinium (dining room), ecus (hall for receiving guests) and ala (rooms for conversations). In addition, the house had cubicles (bedrooms), exedras (ceremonial rooms that opened into the peristyle), balneum (bath), xist (space for walking, decorated with flowers, shrubs).

The urban Italian house developed from a country estate, the layout of which is an example of a common type of housing. A rectangular yard with a hearth was surrounded by residential and outbuildings. In urban conditions, the courtyard turned into a large room - an atrium (atrium, cavendium), that is, a closed courtyard, where the main interior rooms went. Initially, there was a hearth in its center (the roof above it had a hole for smoke to escape). From the smoke, the walls and ceiling of the atrium were sooty, from which the name of the room came from: ater means "black". Through the same opening, the inner parts of the house were illuminated, since the building faced the street with deaf, windowless walls.

Later, when the atrium became a front room, the place of the hearth was taken by a shallow pool of impluvium, named from the Latin word pluvium rain, since rainwater entered it through a hole in the ceiling - compluvium.

The atrium was the center of the house and the most sacred place, where the whole family gathered, food was cooked here, the hostess did household chores, there was a loom and a box of money, from here the hostess watched everything that was happening in the house. All important family ceremonies took place here - marriage, naming the baby, funeral rites, in the side parts of the atrium (ala - "wing") there was an altar of household gods - lars and penates, where sacrifices were made to them. Wax masks of deceased ancestors were also kept there, arranged so that it was possible to trace the owner's pedigree.

Vitruvius distinguishes two types of atriums: an atrium under open sky with a roof that runs only along the perimeter (this type is called a cavedium from the Latin word cavus - "empty, hollow" and is of Etruscan origin) and an atrium in the full sense of the word, that is, a gallery with a continuous ceiling.

In rich houses, the atrium was finished with marble, the walls were painted with frescoes, marble statues stood in the niches, the floor was mosaic. Rich houses had a vestibule, where one could enter from the street, climbing the stairs.

In the depths of the atrium, there was usually a master's room (tablinum) and a dining room (triclinum). Along the perimeter of the courtyard there were dark closets - bedrooms (cubicles), a pantry, a bathroom, etc. At the back of the house was a vegetable garden (hortus).

All life took place inside the house. The houses had smooth walls and tiled roofs. The central room was an atrium (which was entered through the passage) with a light opening in the middle. To the right and left of the atrium were the reception rooms and bedrooms, which were small rooms with high doors, usually wide open to let light into the rooms. In the center of the atrium was an impluvium, where rainwater flowed from the roof, which fell through pipes into a cistern placed under the floor. When it was necessary to get water, it was taken out by a vessel tied to a rope through the hole left, usually closed by a stone slab laid on a low cylinder.

Opposite the vestibule was a tablinum, separated by a curtain, where the owner received visitors. On the eastern, cooler side, there was usually a summer dining room, and on the western side, a winter one. To the right and left in front of the tablinum were "wings" that served as an extension of the atrium. Through them passed into other rooms, and they were furnished, including cabinets with shelves in which painted wax masks of ancestors were stored. Under each of them there was a plaque with an inscription indicating the name, deeds of the deceased, date of death and other information. These masks were passed down from generation to generation as evidence of the antiquity of the family. On holidays, cabinets were opened and the masks were decorated with wreaths.

The houses could have shops with an entrance from the street or even from the atrium, if the owner himself traded.

The main rooms were distinguished by a considerable height, as was customary in hot countries, and the rooms located under the roof were separated from it by a flat or vaulted ceiling. A layer of air between the ceiling and the roof served as protection against excessive temperature fluctuations. The second floor often jutted out over the street.

There were no chimneys. Rooms with a hearth had a smoke hole in the middle of the roof, and the hearth occupied the central part of the room. Only kitchen ovens and bakery ovens were equipped with chimneys. Living quarters were heated by portable braziers.

There was a garbage pit in the kitchen, often connected to the sewer network, and it also served as a latrine.

The windows of Pompeian houses, with rare exceptions, apparently were not glazed. They were covered with simple bars that let in daylight and kept out drafts.

In the depths of the estate, in the household yard, there were a gardener's dwelling, stalls, a carriage house, etc. Often shops (taberns) were arranged along the facade of the house. They sometimes had eateries, from which the name of the tavern later came. The facades of the houses were simple, and the premises on both sides of the entrance were rented out as shops. The absence of windows on the street facade may have been due to the desire for privacy. The rooms were illuminated through openings at the top of the courtyards and through doors opening onto these courtyards. Since the sun shone brightly and was hot, the openings were made small.

From the street water supply system, water was supplied to the upper floors through lead pipes. The ceilings and walls in the front rooms were decorated with mosaics and frescoes.

Villa (from the Latin villa - manor, estate) - a type of country house with a garden and a park. It first appeared in ancient Rome in the 3rd century BC. BC. Met villas different types: rural and urban.

Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli.

Village villa (villa rustica) - architectural complex residential and commercial buildings. The buildings were grouped around an open, later enclosed yard with a pond for livestock. Near the entrance was the steward's quarters, next to the staff quarters, where all the workers gathered. Separately, there were bakeries, a mill, a threshing floor (a part of the estate intended for drying grain and threshing).

City villa (villa urbana) was intended for entertainment and recreation, usually surrounded by a terraced park with pavilions, fountains, sculpture, grottoes. There were winter and summer rooms, facing south and north, respectively, covered galleries for walking. which provided shade in summer and warmth in winter. Baths, rooms for ball games, dining rooms, living rooms with views of nature, and study rooms were arranged inside. There was a library and rooms for collections.

Luxurious decoration of dwellings appeared among the Greeks only during the decline. The architecture of a private house in Rome arose very late. The harsh views of the ancient Romans allowed monumental buildings only for public purposes. In the era of Pliny, the memory of the first private house with marble columns was still preserved, and the ruins of the Palatine testify to how modest even the dwelling of Livia was. Luxury penetrated into private construction only after Augustus. Some Etruscan motifs are still preserved in detail at that time, but the private house as a whole, from the moment it becomes an object of art, is essentially Greek.

city house

Overall plan.- Speaking of Greek art, we also pointed to the general arrangement of Roman houses. The main difference, according to Vitruvius, is that the living quarters were not located next to the main reception rooms, but behind them. The individual character of the Roman house is given to it by the first courtyard - an atrium, accessible to those waiting, visitors and clients. Vitruvius distinguishes between two types of atriums: an open-air atrium (cavedium) with a roof that runs only along the circumference, and an atrium in the full sense of the word, that is, a gallery with a continuous ceiling.

An open-air atrium, or cavedium.- On the Figure 350 M, N and S depict the main varieties of cavedium, according to Vitruvius: the first version of M is without pillars; rafters rest on through beams; the second option N - pillars support the roof of the portico, from which water flows into the courtyard; and, finally, the third option S - the so-called Tuscan: the water flows out and is diverted by gutters and downpipes. The origin of this type of cavedium corresponds to its name: it is Etruscan. Such a roof arrangement suffers, according to Vitruvius, from the disadvantage that water is poorly drained, but on the other hand, a covered floor is formed above the porticos overlooking the courtyard.

Atrium in the truest sense of the word, in the form of a basilica.- The second type of atrium is a covered courtyard; he is depicted on Figure 351. The central courtyard is bordered by two side porticos, or "wings". At the back is a tablinium with a completely open front facade, communicating with the inner chambers by a wide bay A, called "fauces".

Portraits of ancestors were placed under the porticoes of the atrium; in the tablinium the master of the house received his visitors. All the majestic character of Roman life is reflected in this spacious layout, uniting in one fence the owner of the house, seated in the tablinium, family traditions, personified by the busts of ancestors, and a crowd of clients crowding in the atrium naves.

The internal arrangement of houses according to the ancient plan of the Capitol.- Example A drawing 352, taken from the plan of Rome in the time of Septimius Severus, shows a house in its simplest form, but with two entirely separate courtyards, placed one behind the other, according to two categories of outbuildings.

House in Pompeii.- In order to supplement our instructions with an example that has survived to this day, we cite on figure 352, P image of a Pompeian dwelling, the house of Pansa. This house does not have an atrium in the form of a basilica - we do not meet such luxury in Pompeii, it is just a house with a cavedium.

Around the latter (C) are grouped rooms available to everyone. Hall B, located at the back, is a tablinium. Rooms R facing the street are shops. They were often rented out to complete strangers and completely isolated from the rest of the house. Line X is the boundary of the part of the house reserved for receiving visitors; Next come the family quarters.

A movable partition, which forms the back wall of the tablinium, separates the latter from the dwellings, and only corridor V serves for permanent communication between both parts of the dwelling. holidays this separating partition is removed, and both halves of the dwelling merge into one.

Premises for the family are grouped around the second courtyard D. They include, in addition to living rooms, a dining room, a kitchen and a lavatory. Slave quarters are located, as a precaution, outside private residences and are located on the second floor. On the example of drawing 352, traces of the existence of the second floor were preserved only in building M in the back of courtyard D.

Details of the internal structure and decoration.- With regard to the internal arrangement, the house appears to us in the following form. Each courtyard, or at least the main one, is surrounded by porticos with or without columns. The main rooms are distinguished by a considerable height, as is customary in hot countries, and the rooms located under the roof are separated from it by a flat or vaulted ceiling. The layer of air between this latter and the roof serves as protection against excessive temperature fluctuations. The second floor very often hangs over the ledge over the street.

There are no chimneys. According to Vitruvius, the rooms where the fire was maintained had a hole for smoke in the middle of the roof, and the hearth occupied the central part of the room. Only kitchen ovens and bakers' ovens are fitted with chimneys; portable braziers were the only means of heating ordinary living quarters.

The kitchen has a garbage pit, which, if possible, communicates with the sewer network: it also serves as a latrine, thus anticipating the method of sewage, which is increasingly spreading today.

The windows of Pompeian houses, with rare exceptions, apparently were not glazed. For them, simple lattices were used, like those that we still see in the dwellings of the East. They let in daylight and kept drafts out.

In some houses, bronze seats and beds were found, as well as non-removable dining room equipment - stone beds covered with mattresses. The facades of the houses are devoid of decorative motifs; only in the richest dwellings is there sometimes a door with a profiled impost. In Pompeii, the Asian custom was observed not to decorate the facades of houses and not to open windows on the ground floor to the street.

The interior decoration consisted of mosaic floors, marble fountains, statuettes and wax paintings on the walls of the halls and inside the colonnades of the porticos. Pompeian houses are more than modest. Nobility and grace are felt everywhere in them, as if illuminating the simplest objects with a reflection of Hellenism.

Overcrowding of houses in big cities.- A Pompeian house is typical of a provincial town where land is of little value. Most of the houses have one floor, the highest - two. Another was observed in Rome, where land plots were expensive. The code of laws of Theodosius provides (at least in the 4th century) for the existence of four-story houses, and the floors hung, as in Pompeii, in successive ledges above the street.

Villa

The question of space and the need to reckon with public opinion limited the size of houses and the luxury of their exterior decoration in large cities. This question is gone in country house- villa, and only there we meet the rich exterior decoration of a private building.

The plan of the villa, which does not take into account the conditions of symmetry, combines elements not only of the usual services of a city house, but also of basilicas, thermae and buildings associated with agriculture. The dwelling is sometimes made double: one part, facing south, serves as winter housing, the other, facing north, serves as summer. Grottoes or nympheons with fountains form shelters from the summer heat.

In areas with a cold climate, such as the north of Gaul, winter villas require regular heating. To do this, underground channels are arranged that conduct heated air. This is a real heater, similar to the one we saw when describing the Roman terms. A villa in Mienne (Department of Eure-et-Loire) is an interesting example of such heaters.

A garden stretched between the individual buildings of the villa. We know from the descriptions of Pliny the Younger that the garden consisted of flower beds, divided into regular areas, decorated with fountains, statues and clipped bushes, but devoid of any general symmetry. As in the pavilions they border, each individual part is symmetrical, but when these parts are connected, a free and independent variety is pursued.

We named as an example Gallo-Roman villa at Mienna; you can also name the following villas: in Gaul - Villa Tui and Villa Vaton, near Falaise, in England - Bignor in Sussex. Not far from Rome, near the Appian Way, the ruins of country villas the size of entire city blocks have been preserved. The huge villa built by Hadrian near Tivoli united in its gardens reproductions of structures that the emperor admired during his travels (Poikile, Serapeion in Canope). Even natural landscapes were reproduced there: the Tempe valley and Peney.

In addition to what ruins give us, we have a very detailed descriptions villas left to us by Cicero about his villa "T usculum”, Pliny about the villa in Laurentine and Sidonius Apollinaris about the villa he owned in Auvergne. The details of these descriptions would involve us, however, in discussions that belong more to archeology than to art history.

House in Syria

All of the above applies mainly to the dwellings of the West. Fast forward now to Roman Asia, to Syria. Here we do not meet any Greco-Etruscan motifs. Both the general concept and the structure of the buildings are purely Asian. Transjordanian Syria abounds with innumerable examples of Oriental dwellings, preserved even better than those of Pompeii. The houses of Gauran and Lejah have come down to us for the most part almost untouched and not only habitable, but also inhabited. Not a single part of these buildings is subject to destruction: the walls and ceilings are made of basalt; the doors are basalt slabs walking on basalt pads; the windows are also made of openwork basalt slabs; yet the building rests on a basalt rock. A significant part of Gauran is completely devoid of forests, and the buildings are entirely derived from materials that are not afraid of time. On the figure 353, A an example of such a house is given: the ceilings consist of slabs resting on arches.

Rice. 353

In other areas, where, although rarely, but still there is a forest, they adhere to a mixed system, shown in Figure 353, B: the lower floor has a stone ceiling, the upper one has a wooden roof.

These houses are designed mainly for hot climates and are primarily a refuge from the heat. The rooms are barely lit by narrow bay windows. Adjacent to these enclosed spaces are completely open porticos; the occupants of the house thus have the choice between total shade or open air and bright light. Section B shows a portico or verandah that serves as a roof and protects the walls from the direct action of sunlight. Its decoration is dominated by Greek motifs.

The internal arrangement of these Syrian houses does not at all indicate a harem life; due to Greek traditions, and mainly under the influence of Christian ideas that dominated these areas during the first centuries, the family's housing is less isolated and isolated. We see in this, first of all, a trace of hospitable customs and caring attention of the Eastern peoples to the guest. Two staircases (A) usually lead to the rooms on the second floor: the guest can climb the external staircase directly to his room, which gives him complete freedom, and only the internal staircase serves for internal communication with the hosts' housing.

Castle

Let us now cast a cursory glance at the palaces - the dwellings of the emperors and dignitaries of the empire. Like a residential building, the palace has a very different character in the Greco-Etruscan West and in the semi-Persian, semi-Greek East. On the figure 354 two examples of imperial dwellings are given: Palatina - in the West and the palace in Spalato - in the East.

Note: Choisy contrasts the rather modest house of Augustus on the Palatine with the luxurious palace of Diocletian in Spalato, considering the former as a phenomenon characteristic of the Roman West, and the latter for the East. On this occasion, it should be noted that the difference noted by Choisy must be explained not in geographical, but in historical terms. During the beginning of the principate, that is, in the era of Augustus (30 BC-14 AD) and Tiberius (14-37 AD), emperors live in rather modest dwellings . But already Caligula (37-41 AD) builds a more magnificent house for himself, and Nero (41-70) and Domitian (83-98) build huge palaces for themselves.

Since that time, the usual residence of the emperor is a magnificent palace, regardless of whether one is being built in Rome, as Septimius Severus (193-211), who ruled almost a century before Diocletian, did, or in the East, as was the case with the already mentioned palace in Spalato Diocletian (284-305). G. Roissier. Promenades archeology. Rome et Pompei, Paris, 1887, p. 89).

Palatine Augustus is simply a rather modest house, the remains of which entered in the form of foundations in the later superstructures of the Flavians. Lush buildings began to be erected only under Vespasian. The only part of the building that has come down to us, reserved for representation (P), corresponds in all respects to traditional plans: an atrium, waiting and audience rooms, all of which are wide open.

Spalato the same is an Asian palace and keeps the imprint of distrust and the closed life of its inhabitants. The building (S) is located on the Adriatic coast, but the main entrance is not directed towards the sea, but towards the gardens (R). The reception suites are grouped around entrance R; the remote part of B, overlooking the sea, was apparently occupied by a harem. A temple was placed in T, and a tomb, which Diocletian had prepared for himself, was placed in O.

Another feature of Spalato is that the palace is a fortified dwelling. The barbarian threat required defensive measures. The buildings are not scattered, as in the villa in the time of the Antonines, but are collected, surrounded by a wall with towers and underground passage accessible from the sea. Spalato is a cross between a seraglio and a feudal castle. Eastern palaces in Arakel-Emir and Mashite belong to the same type. The palaces at Arles and Trier belong to the Palatine type.

August Choisy. History of architecture. August Choisy. Histoire De L "Architecture