Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/221

 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 163 rooms, e.g., libraries, each receiving sufficient light through the door openings. An open saloon, or tablinum, with " fauces," or narrow passages, led to the peristyle, or inner court, often the garden of the house ; and around were grouped the cubicula^ or bedrooms, the triclinium, or dining-room (summer and winter), with different aspects, the (t'cus, or reception room, and the alae, or recesses, for conversation. The dining-rooms were fitted with three couches each for three people to recline upon, as nine was the recognized number for a Roman feast. The peristyle was the centre of the private part of the house, corresponding to the hall of Elizabethan times, and it usually had a small shrine or altar (Nos. 68 g, 69 e). The walls and floors were richly decorated with mosaics and paintings. The kitchen and pantry are in the side of the peristyle, furthest from the entrance. The Houses of the Faun, Vettius, Diomede, the Tragic Poet, and Sallust, are other well-known examples of Pompeian houses which have their floors, walls, and vaults decorated in a characteristic style, to which the name " Pompeian " is now applied, and which were furnished with domestic implements such as candelabra (Nos. 68, 69), and fountains. The floors of these houses were of patterned mosaic, either in black and white (No. 69 k) or of colored marbles. The walls were either painted to imitate marble or executed in fresco, the darkest colors of the decorative scheme being placed nearer the ground. Pictures were some- times framed with architectural features consisting of slender shafts, suggestive of a metallic origin, with entablatures in perspective. The ceilings, which have to be imagined, had pro- bably painted and gilded timbers, forming an important element in the decorative scheme. The roofs were covered with tiles or bright colored terra- cotta. Lytton's great novel, " The Last Days of Pompeii," will be found of interest to the student as a description of the habits and life of the Romans, The Pompeian House at the Crystal Palace, designed by the late Sir Digby Wyatt, is an exceedingly good reproduction of an ordinary Pompeian house, the decorations being copies of original paintings at Pompeii. Hadrian's Villa, near Tivoli, resembled a palace in its extent, occupying an area of about seven square miles. Besides the imperial apartments it was surrounded by terraces, peristyles, palaestra, theatres, a gymnasium, and thermae. Restorations have been made by many authorities, as Piranesi, Canina, and others. Examples of Roman villas exist in England (see page 280). The insula, or tenement of many stories, seems to have resembled the modern flat.