Roman World

The Roman House

A house is not only an architectural entity, but also a domicile, a materialisation of status, where men, freedmen, slaves, and animals live together, where receptions are held, business is done, weddings are celebrated, where there are births and deaths, in short, everything that is part of everyday civil life. That is why the Roman house can be seen as a place where social, economic, political, cultural, and religious activities took place.

In the Roman world, dwellings could be divided into two main types depending on their location: on the one hand, those located in urban areas, such as domus, or private dwellings occupied by a single owner and his family, and the more modest insulae, where different family groups lived together. On the other hand, we find the villae, which are made up of a group of buildings that form the nucleus of an estate (fundus), normally located in the countryside, where they could have a great variety of natural resources within their reach, such as agricultural, forestry, fishing, mining, etc.