 Domus – a house in the city for wealthy Romans  Villa – a country estate for especially rich Romans  Insulae – apartments in the city with regular rent charges for less wealthy, more common Romans  Romans with enough money to afford their own place to live also had houses, but they did not follow the typical floor plan of a domus. Instead, they pretty much stuck to the basics. The important thing was that they were not in cramped insulae.

These are examples of a Roman domus floor plan. Not every domus followed the same floor plan, so some elements from one may be missing in another. Rich Romans often copied Greek plans, leading to many of these design elements, which changed through time. We will discuss the various rooms beginning on the left of the plans and working our way to the right. The very left of the plan is where the house connects to the street.

Instead of having a front lawn, wealthy Romans with a domus would have at least two tabernae – shops built into their houses! These could be run by the family or by one of its clients (someone indebted to the family). These tabernae were on either side of the entrance way, but did not connect to the rest of the house. Tabernae also appeared in apartments and most markets, most often frequented by Roman freedmen. They were typically only one room.

The house itself was sealed off from the street by a door called an ianua. The inset between the street and the door, if there was one, was called the vestibulum. Through the door, a narrow hallway called the fauces led into the house. Decorations here might show off the owner’s wealth. A set of fauces is literally the jaws or throat, so the narrowness must have reminded the Romans of this. This is where we get the English word faucet. The narrowness would serve to funnel intruders or hide the splendor of the home until one entered the atrium.

The room where the host would greet the guest was called the atrium. This was the main room of the house, with a hole in the ceiling. Originally, the family kept a fire here and needed a hole for the smoke. The soot on the ceiling turned it ater or black, naming the room.

 In later times, the hole in the roof – the compluvium – was sloped inwards. Rainwater would then fall into the atrium and collect in the impluvium. This was both aesthetically pleasing and a great source of water.

Multiple cubicula could be found on either side of the atrium. Deeper in the house, they might also be found around the peristylium. These had many uses, perhaps as libraries or meeting rooms, giving us the English cubicle. The most well-known use of the cubiculum was as a bedroom. Some rooms were lavishly decorated, but many simply had a bed and a chest for storage.

On the floorplans shown earlier, each C is a cubiculum. Remember that slaves might also be part of the family, and need a place to sleep! This and the many uses for cubicula explain the number of them.

The alae, or wings, were two niches extending off to either side of the atrium. They often had religious purposes like storing the imagines, busts of the homeowner’s ancestors. They might also be home to the hearth (the fire for the house) or the Lararium, where the spirits of the household gods (the Lares) would reside. The Lararium could be set into the wall, a standalone shrine, or attached to the wall.

Based on the English word culinary, you might have guessed correctly that this was the Roman kitchen. This was a dark room, filled with smoke because there was no chimney. If the family was wealthy enough to have a domus, then they could also afford slaves to cook instead of the mother. Slaves used ovens to cook and to keep dishes warm.

The triclinium was a dining room composed of three couches on which to recline, and the name comes from the Greek for 3 couches. These were arranged in a U shape, and one’s status in the household or in society determined his or her seating. Diners would lie down on their left sides facing the middle. These rooms were often lavishly decorated to show off wealth to guests. Some houses had more than one, with different sizes for different sized parties. Sometimes an extra triclinium was outside to enjoy good weather.

The tablinum was the office or study of the master of the house. It was found between the culina and the triclinium, and it connected the atrium and front half of the house to the peristylium and back half of the house. The room was decorated with images of the family, and here the head of the house met with his clients to discuss business.

The peristylium (or peristyle) was a courtyard build into the back of the house. Columns surrounded it, and the center of the courtyard typically had a walkway and a garden. Fountains might also adorn the area. This was all for a mostly aesthetic purpose, and another way to show off the owner’s wealth. Nearby might be a few more cubicula.

The back of the house often housed a hortus, or garden. These would range in size depending on the owner’s wealth – i.e. how much land he could buy in the city. Slaves would tend the gardens and grow foods to feed the family or to sell in the tabernae. Like any garden the hortus could also play an aesthetic role, making the house more beautiful.

The exedra was a small recess in the back of the house near the hortus or peristylium. Here, family members could converse with each other or with guests while enjoying the weather. It was adapted from a semi-circular Greek structure where orators and philosophers would hold speeches or dialogues with other citizens.

The more decorations, the richer a guest could tell the host was. These took several shapes: columns in the atrium and peristylium, paintings on the walls, gold and other precious minerals on the walls and furniture, and most commonly mosaics. Mosaics are a collection of small stones of different colors on the floor, arranged to make a pattern or a picture. The right one tells the observant passerby to beware of the dog:

This kind of home was reserved for the wealthiest Romans. It was a country townhouse and often the center of a latifundium, or large-scale farming estate. It was larger than any personal residence could be in the city due to the open land, and often had so many slaves that some slaves had to be in charge of others. Some incorporated elements of the domus, but all were on a much larger scale.

Insulae, literally islands, were apartments in the city for those too poor to own their own house. Many freedmen lived in these, and everyone who did paid rent. These intermingled with the domus of the rich, as there were no set neighborhoods. The bottom floor was reserved for tabernae, while the upper floors (up to six or seven) housed the residents. The largest apartments were on the 2 nd floor, and smallest on the top.