Italian cities and towns

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San Gimignano

[Your Old Comrade]

This new video about ancient Rome from our "History in 3D" creative team shows the Eternal City at the peak of its glory.
This virtual 3D reconstruction was made with a high level of detail and accuracy, in accordance with all the latest historical researches. Relatively soon the reconstructions of some most famous Roman buildings and the entire city center will be available for review as virtual applications.

[Your Old Comrade]

[Your Old Comrade]

Housing in ancient Rome brings to mind initially the roman villa, a large country residence. But, houses in ancient Rome also included roman Domus and Villae. However, many Roman citizens lived in so called insulae, urban apartment blocks, which had up to seven floors. Only the wealthiest Romans were able to afford a roman domus, a city mansion, and only the super-rich owned a countryside roman villa.
The home of an average citizen in the city of Rome could have looked like this. These blocks of houses the Romans called “islands”, or insulae in Latin. On the ground floor, there were stores , the so-called tabernae. On the upper floors, there were cenacula, apartments. The roomiest and best-furnished flats were on the first floor. they had, multiple rooms, balconies, toilets and in some cases even running water fed by aqueducts. The residents of the higher floors lived in smaller and poorer apartments without private toilets, but they were cheaper. On the rooftops of insulae, there were sometimes even improvised wooden sheds.

Recommended Reading:
Biermann, V., s.v. Villa, in: Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World.
Delaine, J., Insulae, in: Claire Holleran and Amanda Claridge (editors) A Companion to the City of Rome, 2018.
Höcker, C., s.v. Insula, in: Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World.
Linke, B., s.v. Domus, in: Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World.
Platts, H., The Development and Role of the Roman Aristocratic Domus, in: Claire Holleran and Amanda Claridge (editors) A Companion to the City of Rome, 2018.
Weeber, K.-W., Alltag im Alten Rom. Das Leben in der Stadt, Düsseldorf 2001.

[Your Old Comrade]

In ancient Pompeii, the richest and poorest lived amid each other, often separated only by a thin partition wall. Their lives & worlds also mingled on the streets. The smell of bakeries, the din of smithies, the hustle and bustle of taverns and shops. Take a short tour of the various industry & commerce, patronage & charity one could find within steps of the elite House of Sallust.

[Your Old Comrade]

Rainy evening in Cinque Terre. This is a walk around the village of Manarola before the sunset. This was a light rainfall with a little bit of thunder rumbles. Enjoy!

[Your Old Comrade]

[Your Old Comrade]

This video explores some of the highlights of Ostia, Rome's well-preserved (but often overlooked) port city. Check out @toldinstonefootnotes for a video on the fascinating Roman coins that allow us to reconstruct Ostia's harbor facilities.

[Your Old Comrade]

Faces of Ancient Europe: Wonders of the Domus Aurea (Paintings from the Nero's Golden House)

The Domus Aurea (Latin, "Golden House") was a vast landscaped palace built by the Emperor Nero in the heart of ancient Rome after the great fire in 64 AD had destroyed a large part of the city and the aristocratic villas on the Palatine Hill.

Here are some splendid tempera on paper paintings, which provided the originals for the engravings in “Vestigia delle Terme di Tito e loro interne pitture”, published by Ludovico Mirri in Rome in 1776.

The artists behind the sixty-one illustrations in the book are Swiss-Italian architect Vincenzo Brenna (1741-1820), who worked very much in the Russian Empire, and Franciszek Smuglewicz (1745-1807), a Polish painter who lived in Rome from 1763 to 1784.

In very complex conditions, the two artists copied the paintings of Nero’s Domus Aurea – which at the time was still considered as one with the Baths of Titus, hence the name of the book.

The engravings translating the two artists’ drawings are by Marco Carloni (1742-1796).

Watercolor paintings of the Domus Aurea in the National Museum in Warsaw is a collection of 60 plates from a coloured portfolio Vestigia delle Terme di Tito. This set showing paintings from the Nero's Golden House (Domus Aurea) was created by Vincenzo Brenna, a Roman architect, a Polish painter and draughtsman Franciszek Smuglewicz, and Marco Gregorio Carloni, a Roman engraver specialising in engravings of ancient monuments.

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#AncientRome #EmperorNero

[Your Old Comrade]

The Domus Aurea, the Golden House was built by Emperor Nero, as his palace in the center of Rome.
At the time of Nero, the palace extended from the Palatin up to the Esquilin, a part of the Caelius was also included. In the center, where the Coloseum stands today, was a large artificial lake. The area encompassed 80 ha. A number of jokes about the megalomania of the emperor circulated in Rome .
The previous palace, the Domus Transitoria, was still under construction when the great fire of Rome in AD 64 destroyed it.
After the fire in the Domus Aurea in the year 104 AD, the interiors, columns and sculptures were taken away and reused elsewhere. The palace was filled with soil to create a foundation for the Baths of Trajan. The Colosseum was set up on the place of the lake.
Today, only the part of the palace which was used as an entertainment area, is preserved. Most of the wall paintings were created by the Roman painter Fabullus. You still can see some fragments today.
The dome of the dining hall (one suspects at least that it was a dining hall) was made of unreinforced solid concrete. The dome was the largest of its time, until it was surpassed by the dome of the Pantheon. The dome rested on an octagon. On the south side, the room offered a clear view of the lake and the garden. From the north side, an artificial waterfall splashed through the room.
Many areas were covered with marble, of which nothing remains. The private rooms were gilded, hence the name Domus Aurea.
This caused a vaulted passage to collapse in 2010.
The height of the rooms and the dimensions of the halls were nearly unbelievable. The remains of the mural paintings conveyed at least an impression how it may have looked like originally.