Many of the wealthy houses in Pompeii were deliberately designed to appear modest and closed off from the street, with narrow entrances that opened into spacious and richly decorated interiors. The presence of shops along the street frontage – which were often owned by the household behind them – also contributed to this limited visibility.
The layout controlled privacy and social access, allowing owners carefully to manage how visitors experienced their homes and to reveal their wealth only to selected guests.
The design faces inward with only a few small windows which regulated temperature in the warm climate, creating a cooler and more comfortable environment inside.
The restricted entrance and minimal exterior openings may have provided some security benefits.
According to the Roman architect Vitruvius, the main parts of a Roman house were:
ālae (plural)
ātrium
faucēs (plural)
ōstium
peristȳlium
tablīnum
vestibulum
[1] vestibulum, -ī [2/n]: enclosed space between the entrance of the house and the street
There is debate as to what this represented since it had different meanings in different periods of history and in different kinds of houses. Moreover, written records and what has been discovered in archaeology do not always match.
[i] In palaces or large villas, this could refer to a courtyard surrounded on all three sides by the house itself: In the vestibulum the clients assembled, till the door was opened, to pay their respects (salūtātiō) to the master of the house, so that they might not be left standing either in the street or within the house. (Thurston Peck)
[ii] Image #1: in smaller houses in Rome and in other towns, there was either no vestibulum i.e. the door opened straight onto the street, or the vestibulum was simply marked by a door standing a few feet back from the street. Steps sometimes led up to the vestibulum.
The Diagram below shows (figure 4) that the entrance to the properties could be surrounded by shops. In other words, the only part of the house visible from the street was the door.
Comenius’ use of the word – and Hoole’s translation of it as ‘porch’ – conveys the second idea, which, of course, is still a feature of houses now.
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[2] Images #2 and #3: the terms vestibulum and faucēs, -ium [3/f] are sometimes not differentiated, especially in town houses. The first meaning of faucēs is ‘throat’ but, in architecture, it specifically refers to the narrow entry passage immediately beyond the main entrance and door to the house. In the diagram faucēs are also marked as being narrow corridors within the property.
ōstium, -ī [2/n]: entrance
iānua, -ae [1/f]: door
foris, -is [3/f]: door; entrance; pl: forēs, -ium, refers to the two leaves of a door
Note: forās, an adverb referring to “out of doors”
In this line from Plautus, the entrance area and door are expressed as separate ideas:
īte forās: hīc volō ante ōstium et iānuam
Come out of doors; here, before the entrance and the door
This typically led to the:
[3] image #4: ātrium, -ī [2/n]: the main reception room in a large city house or villa – a declaration of wealth and status; you can imagine first walking through the narrow entrance that finally reveals this large and impressively decorated area with natural overhead light from the [a] compluvium, -ī [2/n], the opening in the ceiling through which rainwater fell into the [b] impluvium, -ī [2/n], a shallow pool directly below. The water from the basin flowed down into a well: puteus, -ī [2/m].
