House of Venus
About
The House of Venus went up in the second half of the first century CE as one of Volubilis's grand Roman-era residences, built around a private suite of baths that set it apart from ordinary townhouses. Its dining room later gained a mosaic showing Venus riding a ship escorted by the Three Graces and nymphs on sea-horses, one of the most admired images ever pulled from Volubilis's soil. That mosaic was a second-century addition, but the house itself, its walls, baths, and plan, already stood complete when Trajan died in 117 CE. The residence anchored a quarter of the city where Volubilis's oil-wealthy elite kept building increasingly showy homes.
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.
In ancient writing
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 5.1
Names Volubilis among the towns of Mauretania; the passage describes the town, not this specific house.
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 →