In 1960, a workman found substantial ancient building rubble at Fishbourne, West Sussex, while digging a trench. In 1961 a trial excavation took place and what was essentially a complete Roman villa was found. A huge variety of Roman homes can also be found at Pompeii, of course.
Some Roman villas in Britain have survived in such good condition that we have a very clear idea about how the rich lived and what their homes were like. When the Romans left Britain, it appears that some villas were covered with dirt to 'trap' into them the spirits of the Romans - thus, they could not 'escape'.
Pompeii was buried when the nearby, volcano Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, covering the town and its inhabitants in many tons of pumice and volcanic ash. The disaster remained in people's minds for many years but was eventually forgotten, until the exploration of the ancient site started in an area called 'Civita', in 1748. This was found to be a comparatively easy task, because the debris that had caused such chaos was light and not compacted.
Many artefacts considered suitable for the private collection of the Bourbon king Charles III (reigned 1759-88) were removed, and transported to Naples - where they remain to this day, displayed in the Museo Nazionale. Meanwhile, other wall paintings were stripped from the walls and framed, and yet other artefacts and wall paintings were damaged or irreparably destroyed.
After the spoliation, buildings such as Villa di Cicerone and Villa di Giulia Felice were back-filled, although many famous scholars, among them Johann Winckelmann, demonstrated strongly against this, as they had against the previous destruction. By the end of the 18th century, two wide areas had been uncovered: the Quartiere dei Teatri with the Tempio d'Iside, and the Via delle Tombe with the Villa di Diomede.
Giuseppe Fiorelli directed the Pompeii excavation from 1863 to 1875 - introducing an entirely new system for the project. Instead of uncovering the streets first, in order to excavate the houses from the ground floor up, he imposed a system of uncovering the houses from the top down - a better way of preserving everything that was discovered.
The Romans, were simple, even for the wealthy or ruling classes. They were small familiar huts constructed on the axial plan of a central hall with an open skylight. It is believed that theTemple of Vesta was, in form, copied from the these early dwellings because the worship of Vesta began in individual homes. The huts were probably made of mud and wood with thatched roofs and a centre opening for the hearth's smoke to escape. This could have been the beginnings of the atrium, which was common in later homes. As Rome became more and more prosperous from trade and conquest, the homes of the wealthy increased in both size and luxury emulating both the Etruscan atrium house and Hellenistic peristyle house.
The Roman houses were so well built, if you were rich, that many examples of Roman houses exist throughout the Roman Empire. If you were poor in Rome, you lived in simple flats or apartments - the inside of these places was symbolic of your lack of wealth. These flats were known as insulae and only contained two rooms at the most. People tended to use them only for sleeping as they had to work, visit the baths (as their flats had no running water) and they usually ate in local inns as cooking in these flats was not safe.
In cities throughout the Roman Empire, wealthy homeowners lived in buildings with few exterior windows. Glass windows weren't readily available: glass production was in its infancy. Thus a wealthy Roman citizen lived in a large house separated into two parts, and linked together through the tablinum or study or by a small passageway.
To protect the family from intruders, it would not face the streets, only its entrance providing more room for living spaces and gardens behind. The main room in the house was the atrium, a windowless room with a space in the ceiling (the compluvium) through which rain fell into the impluvium, a hollow space in the floor. There were alcoves on either side of the atrium, called alae, in which wax busts of ancestors were kept. There were four types of atrium: Tuscan (in which the roof was supported by two pairs of beams that crossed each other at right angles, tetrastylon (in which four pillars supported the roof beams at the corners of the compluvium), displuviatum (in which the roof sloped to the out walls), and testudinatum. Later the atrium was reduced to being a reception room.
Surrounding the atrium were arranged the master's families' main rooms: the small cubicula or bedrooms, the tablinum or study, and the triclinium or dining-room. The tablinum, the master's office or study, was where the master kept his arca (a heavy chest, sometimes chained to the floor, containing money and valuables). There were other rooms used for business: sometimes house owners converted front rooms into shops.
Sometimes larger houses had an open court in front of the door, called a vesibulum, with an ornamental pavement from the door to the street. In small houses this term applied to the narrow space between the door and the inner edge of the sidewalk
Homes were made, quite often, of brick with red tile roofs, with rooms arranged around a central courtyard. The windows and balconies faced the courtyard, not the street, to keep homes safe from burglars. There were painting on the walls and beautiful mosaics on the floor. There was very little furniture, and no carpeting. Wealthy Romans might have a house with a front door, bedrooms, an office, a kitchen, a dining room, a garden, a temple, an atrium, a toilet, and a private bath.
The main rooms were decorated with coloured plaster walls and, if they could be afforded, mosaics. These decorated floors were a statement of your wealth and importance. The grander mosaics had to be done by experts and they were expensive. A master mosaic craftsman would map out the picture while those who worked for him did the actual work in making a mosaic. Probably the most famous Roman mosaic in Britain is at Fishbourne Palace in West Sussex.
Roman houses had various methods for heating. In severe winter weather, portable stoves (braziers made of metal for holding hot coals) were used. Wealthy people sometimes had furnaces with chimneys. The fire was under the house, and warm air circulated in tile pipes or in hollow walls and floors without coming directy into the rooms. This heating arrangement was called a hypocaust, and it was used by moth baths in Italy. This system of heating was also used to keep some Roman baths hot if they had no access to naturally heated water.
Water was brought to houses by aqueducts from the mountains, sometimes for a long distance. Often houses had a tank in the upper story. Not many rooms had plumbing - slaves carried water as needed. The Cloaca Maxima, Rome's great sewer said to have been build in the time of the kings, continued to serve Rome until early in the present century.
There were no clearly defined separate spaces for slaves or for women. Slaves were ubiquitous in a Roman household and slept outside their masters' doors at night; women used the atrium and other spaces to work once the men had left for the forum. There was also no clear distinction between rooms meant solely for private use and public rooms, as any private room could be opened to guests at a moment's notice.
The kitchen was usually a very small room with a small masonry counter wood-burning stove. The wealthy had a slave who worked as a cook and spent nearly all his or her time in the kitchen. During a hot summer day the family ate their meals in the summer triclinium to stave off the heat.
Most of the light came from the compluvium and the open peristylium.
