Ancient Rome: The Roman Colosseum

According to Alchin (2015), there were different categories of dwelling depending upon the wealth and power; palaces for emperors, town houses for wealthy Patricians, country villas for wealthy Romans, and tenements for poor Romans.

The Roman Colosseum was humongous with 300 rooms decorated with fine stones and gold leaves on the walls and ceilings. The palaces were equipped with heating, bath and fountains.

The Roman Town houses were massive buildings with portico where the windows were glazed with expensive thick glass. Insulae were detached town houses in urban area for rich Romans. According to Kamm, the town house were usually one storied that had slopped roof inwards and downwards from all sides to a rectangular opening and the floor

These ancient homes had court facing streets with portico extended along the entire front surrounded by galleries on pillars, reception rooms bed rooms and inner apartment to main bedroom. The second floor had dining room and apartment of women and the dormitories of slaves. These houses had beautiful courtyards fountains, gardens and occasional private baths. Wealthy owners lived on ground floor with access to public sewer but the upstairs private latrines were not connected to public latrines and had to make their own arrangements.

The tenement apartments were small dark, filthy and crowded with four to six storied. These were made of wood so were prone to fire and collapse. They had no toilets so the poor romans had public latrines or chamber pots. There apartments had no water and no heating system. Windows were made of inexpensive glass covered with curtains or wooden shutters.

Kamm stated that the urban congestion was problem in Rome from early times with 1782 houses for 50,000 populations with mostly slaves. At the same time the rich Romans had two kinds of villa, villa rustica, glorified farmhouse and villa urbana, luxuriated for holiday.