Isometric Diagram Of A Pompeian House. The tendency to an axial layout with a sequence of roofed and unroofed elements is clearly emphasised:
the entrance passage (1) leads to the front hall or atrium (2), behind which the reception room or tablinum (3) opens on to the colonnaded garden or
peristyle (4). The recesses (alae) for the display of family portraits are at the back corners of the atrium (5).
The first important characteristic to observe in this kind of house is its privacy. The ground floor at least was entirely inward-looking; apart from a few
slit windows at a high level, its exterior walls presented a blind face to the surrounding world-as much to insure against burglary, one imagines, as to
shut out the noise and bustle of the streets. Another characteristic is a tendency to axial planning. Even if it could not always be achieved in practice,
the implicit ideal of the domus was a vista running from the front door through the centre of the atrium and the tablinum into the peristyle, often
focusing on an architectural feature of some form at the rear. In the House of the Faun, a grand double-atrium survivor of Pompeii's palmiest days,
larger even than the royal palace at Pergamum, the main vista through the western atrium culminated in the columnar exedra paved with the Alexander
mosaic (plate facing p. 438). In other Pompeian houses a more ostentatious later generation installed a brightly coloured mosaic fountain-niche at the
back of the garden, strategically placed to catch the eye of callers at the street-door. A further notable feature of the house was its strong contrasts of
light and shade. In the bright Mediterranean summer the aesthetic effect of the vista would have been conditioned by the alternation of deep shadow
and dazzling sunlight, and even in the darker days of winter the rhythm of light and shade would have been a potent visual factor.
The Interior Of The House Of The Tragic Poet At Pompeii: imaginative reconstruction drawing by William Gell (1832), looking from the atrium
through to the peristyle. At the rear a mosaic fountain-niche forms the focus of an axial vista from the street door. Gell's drawing, together with the
other illustrations in his Pompeiana, helped to inspire Lytton's description of the house of Glaucus in The Last Days of Pompeii (1834).
This last point leads naturally to the consideration of lighting, heating, and related amenities. In summer the cool, lofty rooms and the shady garden
porticoes of the domus provided welcome relief from the heat and glare; but in winter the same rooms could be uncomfortably cold and dark.
Although the chill of mosaic and mortar pavements could doubtless be alleviated with the aid of woven rugs, there was no entirely satisfactory way of
heating living-rooms and bedrooms in early-imperial times. The under floor heating systems which were employed in bath-suites were rarely
introduced for other kinds of room, except (later) in the colder climes of the northern provinces. Generally householders had to rely on charcoal
braziers, a source of heat which would have been unpleasantly smoky, especially in those chambers which were less well ventilated. At the same time