Domus Europae

About

One of the wealthy peristyle townhouses that spread through Cuicul's central district as the city prospered through the 2nd and 3rd centuries, taking its modern name from a figured mosaic of Europa and the bull found in one of its rooms. That mosaic was actually laid centuries after the house was first built, when a room was remodeled into a formal dining triclinium in the 5th century, showing how long these grand African townhouses stayed in fashionable use. Rich mosaic pavements throughout the house display the domestic opulence that Cuicul's merchant and landowning families could afford at their height. Neither the house's construction nor its famous decoration belongs to the city's founding decades under Nerva and Trajan.

What happened here

The front door opens onto a corridor and then a roofed hall with a pool under an opening in the roof, and that hall is a public room — clients arrive at dawn to greet the owner, and the whole plan is arranged so they can be received and impressed. Behind it, a colonnaded garden with a dining room off it, three couches around a low table, guests reclining on the left elbow. Rooms are small, dark and multi-purpose; furniture is moved as needed. Walls are painted to open the space out with fake architecture and landscapes. Windows are shuttered rather than glazed. Cooking, laundry and the slaves' quarters are pushed to the edges. Street frontage is let out as shops, because it is too valuable to waste.

Sources

• https://roman-gardens.github.io/province/numidia/cuicul/house_of_europa/
• https://www.worldhistory.org/article/436/the-heritage-of-cuicul/

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