As you pass through the entrance you arrive in the atrium. This was the grandest room in the house. It was the place for receiving guests and visitors and for general relaxation. It had an opening in the roof for cool air ventilation and also to let in sunlight to illuminate the many marble statues set around the room and the paintings on the wall. Beneath the roof opening on the floor of the atrium was the impluvium. This was a shallow pool of rainwater collected through the roof hole. Beneath the impluvium were systems for the storage of water that could be piped through the house and used as drinking water.
The tablinium was a room with a table used for study. It was the mid point of the house.
The family bedrooms – the cubiculae were arranged in the back half of the house. There would also be sleeping area for slaves and storage spaces here. The open space in the back part of the houses was called the peristylum. A colonnade – a covered walkway with columns, surrounded it. In the centre there may have been a garden but certainly some flowers and shrubs. There was sometimes a fountain too. The peristylum was a place for peaceful recreation away from the busy bustling town.
A very important room was the dining room called the triclinium. Eating good food was seen as a sign of status and to have dinner parties showed your hospitality and your sociability, which were also signs of status. Together with the atrium, the dining room would be the most ornately decorated room in the house. They do not sit on chairs; they had three couches with a low table set in the centre between them. Diners would lie on the couches propped up with cushions propped up with cushions. It was very formal because there were rules about who could lie where.
Compared to a modern house there would be less furniture in a roman house. The tables were low off the floor. People usually sat on couches rather than chairs. There were no wardrobes; clothing etc. was stored in boxes and chests, this was to save space in all the rooms. The Romans liked to paint pictures or designs on the walls. They were painted on over wet plaster – this is called fresco. Another one was to use plaster as decoration – this called stucco. Paintings were usually of mythological scenes, this is because the gods always played a key part in mythology.
Many paintings had architectural devises using friezes and panels. Painted columns provided the verticals and a dado the horizontal. The floors of the important rooms like the atrium and the triclinium would be covered with mosaic – small coloured cubes of stone and set in plaster. Themes were usually geometric patterns but some were pictorial representations.
