Roman Villas Essay

The Romans were master builders, and proved it through their well constructed establishments. There were many different types of housing for Roman citizens to live in. They ranged from the simple apartments to extravagant country houses. The majority of Roman citizens lived in cramped and crowded tenement houses also known as insulae. Mostly wealthy patricians owned comfortable city homes called domus, and had the luxury of possessing very lavish country homes, known as villas, to escape the hectic city life. Accommodations for both parties had very different and similar designs.

Villas in Rome, as aforesaid, were homes for members of the upper-class. There were three types of villa, the villa rustica, villa urbana and the villa maritima. The villa rustica was a self-sufficient farming estate with lots of slaves working on it. The slaves lived in or around the villa and took care of the fields. They harvested produce from around the fields and took it into town to be sold at the farmers market. Later villas became a type of vacation spot for well-to-do citizens, these are the villa maritima and urbana. These homes were extravagantly built, and were very large. Usually they were decorated with beautiful mosaics and paintings, to show the wealth of the owner. Many emperors possessed these magnificent homes and one of the better known seaside villas was owned by Emperor Tiberius. This is called villa Jovis, and is located on the island of Capri.

The inside of the villa was wonderfully open and light. When entering from the street, guests were greeted in an open room called the atrium. The atrium was a large and spacious room with a pool of water called the impluvium in the middle. The impluvium was directly underneath a rectangula...

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... from the balcony, and long central rooms for entertaining guests. One insula housed thirty to fifty people and there were about 42,000 to 46,000 insula in Rome. Insulae had one room or more with a fire to cook their meals with and a balcony to get some fresh air. A lot of people who lived in insula died because of fires, and since there were no fire escape people would jump from their rooms or try desperately to flee the building by using the stairs. More often than not the stairs would collapse.

People in Rome lived very differently but they also had similarities because of the innovative Roman architects who designed their homes. We get modern day apartments and mansions from the Romans insulae, villas, and domus. Today archeologists learn from the way Romans lived and where they lived. We are able to better ourselves because of the Romans’ advances in housing.