House of the Mosaics
About
This house's oldest walls date to the 1st century BCE, standing on foundations of river pebbles with a crushed-terracotta floor set in a white-tessera diamond pattern. That Republican-era core already stood in 117 CE, well before the mosaics that later made the house famous. Its celebrated Circus Maximus and Dionysus mosaics belong to renovations three and five centuries after Trajan's death. Excavators still work the site today near La Spezia.
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
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →