The Roman House (Domus) — How Ancient Romans Lived

What Was a Roman House?

A Roman house, or domus, was the single-family townhouse of a well-off Roman family. It was inward-looking: blank, almost windowless walls faced the street, while life unfolded around an open central hall called the atrium and, in larger homes, a colonnaded peristyle garden behind it. To picture what Roman houses looked like, imagine a sequence of rooms wrapped around light and water.

Three Kinds of Roman Home

The domus was only one of three places Romans lived, and the differences mattered socially:

• Domus — the private town house of a wealthy family, built around an atrium and garden. This is the "classic" ancient Roman house.
• Insula — a multi-storey apartment block, often with shops below, where most ordinary city residents rented cramped rooms. The poor lived here.
• Villa — a larger estate in the countryside, frequently combining a luxurious roman home with a working farm or vineyard.

A single rich family might own a domus in town and one or more villas beyond the walls. The roman houses that survive best are the urban domus of Pompeii, because the 79 AD eruption sealed them under ash.

The Main Parts of the Domus

The domus had a recognisable set of rooms, each with a Latin name and a clear function. This table is your map to the rest of this guide:

Part	Latin name	What it was
Entrance	fauces / vestibulum	Narrow passage from the street into the house
Central hall	atrium	Tall hall, partly open to the sky, with a rainwater pool
Rainwater basin	impluvium	Shallow pool catching rain, feeding a cistern below
Bedrooms	cubicula	Small private sleeping rooms off the atrium
Study / office	tablinum	Reception room where the master received clients
Garden	peristyle	Colonnaded open garden at the heart of larger homes
Dining room	triclinium	Formal dining room with three couches
Kitchen	culina	Service room for cooking, usually small and smoky
Shops	tabernae	Street-front rooms rented out or run by the household

Built Around Light and Water

The genius of the domus was its handling of light and rainwater. The atrium roof sloped inward to an opening (the compluvium), funnelling rain into the impluvium basin and then into an underground cistern. Beyond it, the peristyle garden brought greenery, fountains and air into the centre of the home. Because the house turned its back on the noisy street, these inner spaces stayed cool, private and bright.

Where to See Roman Houses

Pompeii preserves the best surviving examples of the domus anywhere in the Roman world. Two stand out:

• House of the Faun — one of the largest private homes in Pompeii, famous for its bronze dancing faun and the Alexander Mosaic.
• House of the Vettii — a richly frescoed merchants' house with a beautifully restored peristyle garden.

Both sit inside the Pompeii Archaeological Park (open roughly 09:00–19:00 in summer, 09:00–17:00 in winter; standard adult ticket about €18 — confirm current details at pompeiisites.org).

Explore Each Part in Detail

This page is the hub. Follow the spokes to go deeper:

• The full room-by-room layout of the domus, front to back.
• The atrium, the central hall just inside the door.
• The impluvium rainwater basin and cistern system.
• The tablinum, the master's study and reception room.
• The peristyle garden at the heart of the home.
• The other rooms — bedrooms, dining and service spaces.
• The Roman villa and how it differed from the town house.
• The interior decoration of frescoes, mosaics and furniture.
• How houses fit into the wider city.