Notes about buildings

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PALACES, BASILICAS, CAPITOLIA, WAREHOUSES, MARKETS, LIBRARIES AND INSULAE

Palaces (lat. aulae)

The words palazzo (Italian), palace (English) or palais (French) and the other similar words come from the name of the Palatine hill in Rome. On this hill the patrician family Julia (gens Iulia in Latin) owned some land and built their residence. When Octavian became Roman emperor after his succession to Julius Caesar their home and the name of the Palatine hill itself became synonymous with Imperial residence. After him many others emperors built there their houses: Tiberius, the ones from the gens Flavia, Alexandrus Severus and so on.

Basilicas (lat. basilicae)

The Latin word basilica (derived from Greek, Basiliké Stoà, Royal Stoa), was originally used to describe a Roman public building (as in Greece, mainly a tribunal), usually located at the center of a Roman town (forum). In Hellenistic cities, public basilicas appeared in the 2nd century BC. After the Roman Empire became officially Christian, the term came by extension to refer to a large and important church that has been given special ceremonial rites by the Pope.

Government Building  (lat. capitolia)

The Capitolium is a term used to describe a temple dedicated to the Capitoline Triad, or the gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, in the same way of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill in Rome. Its presence indicates that the city was a Roman colony. The dedication to the three gods often involved the presence of a tripartite cell, such as that of the model, while in other cases the three statues of deities were housed together in a single cell. In some cases they were built three temples distinct.

Warehouses (lat. horrea)

A horreum ( usually used in the plural : horrea ) was a warehouse used in Roman times. The Latin word has the meaning of ” barn ” , but the buildings that had this name was used for the storage of different types of goods. At the end of the imperial period in Rome there were about 300 horrea and the most important were of enormous size. The amount of space available in the public horrea was such that the death of Septimius Severus in 211 , there was a limited amount of food sufficient to feed the population of Rome for seven years.
The first known public horrea were built in Rome in the late second century BC by Gaius Gracchus (123 BC). The term was later used to refer to any place used for the custody of the goods (including the cellars – horrea subterranea – or the places where they were priceless works of art or libraries ) . Horrea were smaller in all Roman cities of the empire ; horrea the Roman soldiers were housed in camps , and there were enough supplies stored for one year , to be used in case of siege . There were mostly preserved foodstuffs . Some public horrea were used in a similar way to the banks, to guard valuables .
Markets (lat. macella)

The macellum (sing. for macella) was a particular market of the city of Rome, where they were conveyed the goods to be sold : it was a market specializing in the retail sale of meat and fish , of which examples are the Pozzuoli and Pompeii . This often housed at the center of its courtyard a basin or a nursery for fish. At macellum it was also possible to find pre-packaged foods and vegetables ” exotic” or otherwise not readily available . Usually it was a square building , located on one side of the hole citizen or close to it ( or at least on a main street ), characterized internally by an open courtyard and arcades , often centralized by a large tholos from a nursery for fish or , more simply, from a fountain ( as Gerasa ) . Under the arcades were housed tabernae retailers. The macellum spreads in the Roman world from the third century BC or, however, there are examples outside Rome before this date : the first example , in fact, appears in the City in the second half of the century , remaining a unique until 179 BC, when it was erected in the city a second market by Marco Fulvio Nobiliore . From this moment begins the building also spread outside the strictly urban . This means that the macellum , being new to Rome , needed a certain period of time to be absorbed into the Roman culture and that of the cities submissive .

Libraries (lat. bibliothecae)

Unlike the Greek libraries, readers had direct access to the scrolls, which were kept on shelves built into the walls of a large room. Reading or copying was normally done in the room itself. The surviving records give only a few instances of lending features. As a rule Roman public libraries were bilingual: they had a Latin room and a Greek room. Most of the large Roman baths were also cultural centers, built from the start with a library, with the usual two room arrangement for Greek and Latin texts.

Insulae (lat. insulae)

In Roman architecture, insulae (singular insula) were large apartment buildings where the lower and middle classes of Romans (the plebs) dwelled. The floor at ground level was used for tavernas, shops and businesses with living space on the higher floors. The urbanization of the larger Roman cities caused a great demand for housing which was within a comparable vicinity of the city center and real estate was therefore at a premium. As such, private houses were a luxury which only the wealthy could afford. This led to a majority of the inhabitants of the inner city living in apartment and tenement housing called insulae.
These houses were often constructed at minimal expenses for speculative purposes. The insulae were therefore of poor construction and prone to fire and collapse, as described by Juvenal. The insulae could be up to six or seven stories high and could accommodate over 40 people. The Romans were the first civilisation to utilise flats and apartments.

by Wikipedia

Specialized sites on palaces, capitolia, libraries, basilicas, warehouses, markets,  and insulae:

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