10 Interesting Facts About Roman Housing

Impluvium in an atrium, looking through to the peristyle. House of Menander, Pompeii before 79 C.E. (photo: Carole Raddato, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The ancient Romans created magnificent buildings, both public and private. Here are 11 facts you might not have known.

1. Architecture up to this point had yielded buildings that were beautiful, but necessarily on a smaller scale due to the weight of the materials. Roman concrete, the innovation of the arch, and vaulting allowed the Romans to build truly beautiful, massive buildings.
2. As far as homes, like everything else in Rome money made the difference. The wealthy lived in large homes, usually built on the hillsides. They might also own a countryside villa as well, while the poor lived in tiny mudbrick or stone houses in a village.
3. Large amounts of money would be spent on the atrium to ensure a good presentation to the outside world. The first room at the front of the domus, or house, the atrium was the showpiece of the house. This was where visitors were entertained and business was conducted. The family shrine would be here as well, as a niche built into a wall.
4. Romans intentionally built holes in the roof. The atrium typically had a hole in the roof—an impluvium—to allow rainwater to be caught in a small pool built into the floor. The large garden space at the back was also open to the sky.
5. Unlike now, the best bedrooms were at the front of the house, off the atrium, not in the back. The slaves slept in the back of the house, in much smaller rooms, of course.
6. The kitchen was not a happy place to work. No effort was put into making it comfortable because slaves did all the cooking. The culinas were dark, cramped, and full of smoke since the chimney was simply another hole in the roof. They had small ovens, and the embers from the oven could be used in a brazier for a type of stove.
7. If the atrium was for visitors, the peristyle was for the family. The back of the house centered around a garden surrounded by a roofed, columned walkway. The peristylium would be full of plants, flowering shrubs, and sometimes a fountain.
8. 

   An insula dating from the early 2nd century A.D. in the Roman port town of Ostia Antica. Photo by Nashvilleneighbor.

   The great majority of people—about 90%— however, lived in small apartments. In the 4th-century, there were about 42,000–46,000 insulae in the city, while under 2,000 families lived in a domus. A six- or seven-story building called an insula took up a city block. (The name insula means island.) It would hold perhaps 20 apartments per floor arranged around a central courtyard, each apartment an average of 2,000 square feet.

9. Unlike today, the lower floors were more desirable and more expensive. The upper floors of an insula would have no heat or running water, and the occupants would have to use the public lavatories, not to mention climbing all those stairs. The ground floors consisted of small shops, while the shopkeepers lived on the second floor.
10. Seen by their owners as investment opportunities instead of as housing for their fellow but less fortunate Romans, these buildings were typically quickly thrown together out of wood, mud-brick, and later, Roman concrete. Insulae often burst into flames leaving the occupants homeless.

All of these, of course, paled in comparison to the palaces of the emperors. Nero’s Domus Aurea—the Golden House—is estimated to have covered between 100 and 300 acres.

No wonder they needed so many slaves.