The Atrium house

Casa del Menandro, how a Roman atrium house looks from the main entrance.

Welcome to my new theme – the atrium house. There are several reasons why I choose this subject;

-I’ve got a lot of material on the subject, there is a lot to discuss and I simply find it interesting.

The material will, unfortunately, be presented in a somewhat unorganized manner. There is however something that resembles a plan: I will begin with the theoretic atrium house, the concept scholars have formed during the last 300 years. Thereafter I’ll take a look at how the upper class houses from the time period differs from this theoretic house and I’ll finish up with detail information such as garden decorations, paintings, domestic items etc.

Anyway, I till turn to what an atrium house really is tomorrow. For now, consider it dominating type of Roman upper class houses between ca 300 Bc and 100 Ad ( or even later in extreme cases), depending on where in the empire you are.