The roman house
- Tuscanic, without columns to hold up the sloping sides of the roof;
- Tetrastyle, with four columns supporting the roof, placed at the corners of the pool;
- Corinthian, with the pool surrounded by a larger number of columns;
- Testudinate, which means arched or vaulted like a tortoise shell and here means closed in the center, i.e., without a compluvium.
The bedchambers, called cubicula, opened off the atrium, as did the service rooms and the living and dining rooms.
Straight back from the entrance was the tablinus, the formal drawing room, which was closed off by a curtain. During the Archaic period meals were served there. Later, a room was created just for dining, called triclinium. There were winter and summer tricilinia; the summer triclinium was outside under an arbor and was refreshed by fountains and the play of running water.
A hallway next to the triclinium led into the garden.
Under the Hellenistic influence, domestic architecture replaced and enlarged the early vegetable garden to create an open space surrounded by a covered arcade, called the peristyle, with a garden in the center and numerous rooms all around it. Everything was embellished with decorative elements: mosaics in the floors, paintings on the walls, furnishings and decorative objects, statues, fountains, and the play of running water.
At times, the house had a small bath house opening off the peristyle, with a small atrium in front of it.
The kitchens were usually in lateral areas or inner courtyards. There was a counter with a hearth for cooking, and a sink with a drainpipe which fed into the drain of the adjoining latrine.
A simpler and smaller type of floor plan, inhabited by the more modest social classes, consisted of an entrance hallway, flanked by two cubicula, an open central courtyard, from which another hall flanked by rooms led to a hortus, or vegetable garden, which may have had a little porch.
Finally there were the houses of the small merchants, located behind their shops, which had balconies, the so-called pergule, used both for storage of merchandise and as living quarters.