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Insulae - Coggle Diagram
Insulae
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Great Fire of Rome- in 64 AD, under emperor Nero, there was a huge fire that destroyed around 1/3 of the city, proving that insulae were indeed flammable and poorly constructed
Often the lower floors of insulae may have housed wealthier inhabitants, whilst the higher you went, the poorer the owner would have been. This was partly due to the fact that the building could not support heavy materials on the upper floors so cheap ones like wood would have been used which were not at all durable.
Ostia, 20 miles outside of Rome, has some of the best preserved examples of insulae
Archeological evidence from Ostia seems to suggest that perhaps Roman literary sources exaggerated the poor condition of insulae as there was a great variety of sizes and conditions apparent here
At Ostia a few apartment blocks were designed for wealthy occupants. Some examples of large apartments may have had two large reception rooms and some other smaller rooms including kitchen and toilet facilities
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A source from the 4th Century AD records that the city of Rome had more than 40,000 insulae
Access to the upper floors came from external staircases leading off the street, some of which had impressive doorways, and sometimes from internal staircases as well
From the late 1st Century AD, insulae were usually constructed of brick-faced concrete; roofs were made of wooden beams covered with flat terracotta tiles
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Ground-floor rooms that faced onto the street tended to be shops, which often had an upper mezzanine level used for storage or even as living space
A mezzanine is an intermediate floor of a building, which is open to the floor below
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Cicero, To Atticus 14.9 "Two of my buildings have fallen down, and the rest have large cracks./Not only the Tenants,but even the mice have moved out!"
Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 15.1 "The income from urban property is great, but the dangers are far greater. But if some solution could be found to stop houses in Rome catching fire all the time... I would sell my country property and buy in the city."
Juvenal, Satires 3.190 "We inhabit a Rome held up for the most part by slender Props."
"If the alarm was raised downstairs,/ The last to burn will be the one a bare tile protects from/ The rain."
No archeological evidence survives of the top floors of insulae, as they were poorly constructed. Also, there is no literary evidence of the living conditions of the poorest citizens, and they were illiterate.
Many insulae had no heating and no windows, making them cold and dark, particularly in the winter
Insulae often had public toilets and a communal water supply. Some waste/feces would have been emptied into the streets, meaning very poor sanitation, disease and squalor were prevalent