Casa Romana di Spoleto

Beneath Spoleto's Town Hall, in the block that was once the Roman forum, lies a first-century patrician house with its mosaics still in place. The Casa Romana lets you walk through an atrium and its reception rooms, while considering a legend about the emperor Vespasian's mother.

Why it matters

Most Roman domus survive as floor plans; this one survives as a house. Its excavated rooms retain pavement mosaics, and features such as the atrium basin and raised dining-room floor remain legible in place. The house occupies the terrace that overlooked the forum of Roman Spoletium, today's Piazza del Mercato. The Ministry of Culture describes it as an opportunity to understand how a wealthy Roman family organised domestic life.

What to notice

Follow the sequence of a Roman visit. A short corridor leads to the atrium, whose square impluvium collected rainwater above a cistern; the compluvium roof opening was carried, judging by the socket marks, on four columns, and a well beside the basin drew from the reservoir below. Two marble trapezophora, carved supports for a banqueting table, signalled the wealth of the entrance hall. Around the atrium open the symmetric bedrooms and two alae; on axis stands the tablinum, the master's reception and archive room, flanked by a triclinium on a raised floor still bearing traces of its fresco frame. The colonnaded garden, the peristilium, closed the house on the side rather than the back, an unusual arrangement noted by the Ministry. The mosaics are mostly black-and-white geometric work of the first century AD; the polychrome floors of the rooms beside the tablinum, touched with red tesserae, may belong to an early-second-century refurbishment. Wall decoration survives in the Third Pompeian style, with false-marble bases and red and yellow panels edged with garlands. Finds from the excavation include combs, pins, glass and pottery.

Context and history

The house was found in 1885, when the Spoletan archaeologist Giuseppe Sordini opened the first excavation campaign with funding from the English ambassador Sir Savile Lumley; money ran out, and recovery of all the rooms had to wait until the early twentieth century. During the dig, an inscription appeared recording a dedication to the emperor Caligula by a woman named Polla. This gave rise to the tradition that the house belonged to Vespasia Polla, mother of the emperor Vespasian, whose family came from Norcia; the municipal description notes that the attribution has never been confirmed. The Ministry dates the building's decoration to the first century AD.