The square and the roman house: Architecture and decoration at pompeii and herculaneum

Abstract

WhThe domus is the ancient Roman single–family urban house type. It was known from descriptions in the treatise by Vitruvius, the late first century BC Roman architect, even before the re-discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the middle of the eighteenth century. These towns on the Bay of Naples were destroyed in 79 AD by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius. Excavation of these sites (still ongoing) has provided the opportunity to study Roman provincial towns frozen at a moment in time. Houses, mostly of the domus type, occupied the majority of each town. They varied in size, housing families of all social classes, but followed the same traditions of organization and decoration. Examples from Pompeii and Herculaneum range from the second century BC to the destruction of the cities in 79 AD, and over these three centuries there was relatively little change in the building type. The origins of the domus are obscure, but it had developed over several centuries before the earliest examples known at Pompeii.