Posted By admin on August 17, 2010

Bronze Roman

What was the meterial that Romans used to build their houses?

Was the floor marble or Bronze? And im talking about the elite class.

The Roman House

Typical Houses

Building materials in Rome varied greatly over time. Wood was commonly used for temporary structures. Permanent buildings were made of stone and unburned brick from early times. Walls of dressed stone were laid in regular courses. Tufa from Latium, was a dull color, but could be covered with fine white marble stucco to give it a brilliant finish. For ordinary houses, sun-dried bricks were largely used until the beginning of the first century BC. These were also covered with stucco. In classical time, cement was invented. Walls built of this durable, inexpensive material were called opus caementicium. Cement was also combined with crushed terra cotta to make a waterproof lining (opus Signinum) for cisterns. Although concerte walls were weatherproof, they were usually faced with stone or burned bricks. Walls of this type were called opus incertum (irregular work) if they were faced with stones with no regular size or shape, or opus reticulatum (network) if they were faced with uniform tufa stones. Bricks used for facing were triangular - no walls were built of brick alone.

The term for Roman floors was pavimentum - a name which originally referred to floors in small houses in which the ground in each room was smoothed, covered thickly with small pieces of stone, brick, tile or pottery, and pounded down solidly and smoothly with a heavy rammer. In better houses the floor was made of stone slabs fitted smoothly together. More elaborate houses had concrete floors, often with a mosaic surfaces. In the upper stories floors were made of wood, sometimes with a layer of concrete on top. Roman roofs varied, with some flat and some sloped. The earliest roof was a thatch of straw, later replaced by shingles and finally tiles.

Before the end of the Republic, the majority of the population lived in apartments called insulae (islands), a name originally applied to city blocks. These were sometimes six or seven stories high. Augustus limited their height to seventy feet; Nero, after the great fire in his reign, set a limit of sixty feet. Apartments were build poorly and cheaply and were often in danger of fire and collapse. The building was looked after by an insularius, a slave of the the owner.

In the city of Ancient Rome, only the wealthy could afford a house. The picture on the left shows the peristyle of a Roman house. Houses had different-purposed small windowless rooms surrounding a large reception room called an atrium. The atrium would be brilliantly colored with wall hangings, paintings, and floor tiles. The color would be lit with an opening in the roof and also aired by this same opening. More valuable houses had a second courtyard called a peristyle. It was planted with natural art of trees, flowers, small shrubs, and a pond. Some houses, interesting enough, had small shops on the exterior of the house facing the road.

SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL READING

http://www.classicsunveiled.com/romel/html/romehouse.html

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/workshop/5220/ancient/roman.html

http://www.roman-empire.net/society/soc-house.html

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