Roman Household
Back in Rome however, people lived in either a domus or an insula with the exception of a few who lived on the Palatine Hill in what we now call 'palaces'. These were usually members of the imperial family during the time of the Empire.
The first floor of both insulae and domus had rooms, which opened to the street and were used as shops. We see the same thing in cities today. In Paris, an elegant apartment house does not have apartments on the ground level. One enters into a central courtyard and takes an elevator or stairs to the upper floors. Servants' quarters had been on the fifth floor that had no elevator access. Even today when these rooms are rented for a tidy sum to tenants one uses the stairs to reach the fifth floor. To enter an apartment house in Paris, one visits the concierge. This individual is much like the ianitor of ancient Rome. He or she monitors the comings and goings of everyone, collects mail, hails cabs, meets the plumber or carpenter or in our case, met my husband and me with the key to our friends' apartment. They were away on the day we arrived in Paris and made arrangements for the concierge to give us the key to their apartment as well as show us where everything was. From the kitchen of this apartment one could look out into the courtyard where there was a small area for parking cars and some gardens.
Street scene in Pompeii with villae urbanae and insulae. So far, the insulae of ancient Rome is not very different from a very nice apartment house in modern Paris. But the difference ends after shops and the central courtyard. Roman insulae did not have kitchens or bathrooms, not even toilets. Running water was not available beyond the ground floor. If one wanted to cook, one used a braiser and thus ran the risk of fire. If it were affordable, one could dash downstairs to a corner thermopolium. If one were fortunate, a latrinum might be on the first floor. For water one needed to visit a nearby fons.
Writings on Insulae
The author of a series of books about ancient Rome, Colleen McCullough, gives an excellent description of an insula:
Literally 'island'. Because it was usually surrounded on all sides by streets or lanes or alleys, an apartment building became known as an insula. Roman insulae were very tall (up to 100 feet in height) and most were large enough to warrant the incorporation of an internal light-well; many were large enough to contain more than one internal light-well. Then, as now, Rome was a city of apartment dwellers. This in itself is a strong clue to the answer to the vexed question-how many people lived in Rome. We know the dimensions of the city within the Servian Walls; one-plus kilometers in width, two-plus kilometers in length. That meant the population of Rome at the time of Marius and Sulla (1st century BCE) had to have been at least one million and probably more. Otherwise the insulae would have been half empty and the city smothered in parts. Rome teemed with people, its insulae were multitudinous. Two million (including slaves) might be closer to the truth of the matter.
The following information is a bit redundant but offers another view of apartment houses:
Multi-story apartment houses, insula or 'islands', were home to urban Romans who couldn't afford their own domus. The ground floor was generally set aside for shops or other commercial use. The next floors might have two or four 'luxury' apartments, with the density increasing and the apartment size decreasing on upper floors. Before the days of elevators, there was no such thing as a 'penthouse.' We don't know the height of the tallest Roman insula, but Augustus limited the height of insulae in Rome to 70 ft. and a later emperor to 60, so seven or eight stories may have been relatively common. Writers of the Republican period complained of the dangers to inhabitants of the insulae, that they often burned or collapsed, killing those who lived there. The remains discovered seem to be of sturdy, well-constructed buildings, but that may be because the worst ones had all been replaced in ancient times.
Architecture
If we visited one of these ancient apartment houses, in addition to the obvious differences, like no electricity and no bathrooms on upper floors, we might notice the lack of hallways. A great deal of space was used up by multiple stairways serving only apartments directly above one another. The rooms within an apartment opened directly into each other, so that if there were multiple bedrooms one might have to walk through one to get to another.
The walls of buildings in the ancient Mediterranean world were generally brick or masonry rather than wood. They were thick by modern standards, often one and a half to two feet in buildings of only two stories, and thicker in proportion for taller buildings. Modern buildings, even those that appear to be of stone, are supported by frameworks of steel if they reach great heights. The Washington Monument, in Washington D.C., is the tallest modern building constructed entirely of stone and its walls are 15 ft. thick at the base to support its 555.5 ft. height.
A Walk Through the House
As a visitor to a Roman house you are met at the door (fauces) by the ianitor who asks your business. If he finds it acceptable you are brought through thevestibulum to the atrium. You do not see the rooms on either side of the vestibulum. Behind the walls are tabernae or perhaps the culina which opens not into thevestibulum but into the triclinium. While waiting in the atrium you see a small fountain spouting water from a statue in the impluvium, the pool in the middle of theatrium. Looking up, you see the compluvium, an opening in the roof which allows rain water to fill the impluvium. Should there be a heavy rain, it was not a problem since the mosaic floor was tilted slightly to allow the excess water to drain into the piscina. If the pater familias is willing to see you, he will come into theatrium to greet you or the servus might lead you straight ahead into his tablinum. What a room this is. Around the walls are cases of scrolls and wax tablets. Here is the lararium in which the lares familiares are honored. The imagines hanging on the wall tell you that this is the house of a person who can trace his family back through several generations of nobility. Perhaps you are invited to dinner, or having traveled some distance to meet with the pater familias, you are invited to spend the night in one of the many cubicula that line the perimeter of the house. If it is a warm evening, the cena might be served in the hortus, the center of theperistylium that you have glimpsed through the opening behind the tablinum. This area also has a piscina and compluvium. If the weather is cool, you find that the hypocaust system that heats the floors of the main area of the house is most welcoming. You are pleased to find that this elegant domus has 'running' water under the latrinum so it will not be necessary to leave the comfort of the domus.