The two most important houses, however, at Herculaneum are the house of the mosaic atrium and the house of the stags. And I want to look at both of those houses with you today. I'm going to start with the house of the mosaic atrium. You can see from this plan, which comes from the Ward-Perkins text book. You can see from this plan that they are literally side-by-side; they essentially share a wall as you can see here. And I want to, they are, they are very important in terms of the development not only of residential architecture in Campania in the late 1st Century A.D., but also as a premonition of what's to come in much later residential architecture. Again, I'm going to look at both of them, and we'll start first with the mosaic atrium. If you look at the top of the plan, the northernmost part of the plan, and this house by the way does, as you can see from the monument list it does date to A.D 62 to 79, so at the very end of domestic architecture development in Pompeii. If we look at the uppermost part, the north, you will see that if you enter the house at the arrow and you look ahead, you would think, you look at the vista ahead and see the atrium and the tablinum, you would think you were in a typical Domus Italica type house. It's got those three main elements. It's got the fauces, it's got the atrium with an impluvium and a compluvium as we'll see, and it's got a tablinum all on axis with one another. But as you're standing in the atrium, looking toward the tablinum, you're kind of looking at this tablinum and saying to yourself, this is not the tablinum I know. This is not the tablinum I'm used to, but this is not the tablinum in most of the houses that I know. Is designed in a very different way. And what, what is it that you see in the plan that indicates to us that it's designed in a different way? Does anyone see what it is? >> Columns. >> It has, are they columns? Look closely. >> Flat. >> There, are they round? >> No. >> No they're square. So they're either piers, or their columns on bases that are square. But, but you're right, there are architectural members in here. It turns out they're piers, but, so there are pairs in here, okay. What else? What about the, the actual plan itself? How are those piers, what's the relationship of those piers to the, to the room des-, design? There, someone over there? >> Freestanding >> Is that right? Who? >> Free standing. >> Free standing, yep. What else? Does it remind you of a plan we've seen in another context? You're looking at a central space divided by two aisles, by architectural members, in this case, by piers. A basilica, it's a basilican plan, basilican plan. Central knave, two side offs. What's a basilican plan doing in a house? Is this a basilica or a law court? No. It's actually a winter banqueting room, but a winter banqueting room in the shape of a basilica. And I make a lot of that, because we'll see this happening with increasing frequency in Roman architecture. And that is a certain building type that was developed for one kind of building, in the case, a basilican plan, developed for law courts begins to be used for another kind of room, in this case, a winter banqueting hall. And I like to this the sort of interchangeability of form, that you can, that you can develop a certain plan for a certain kind of structure but then be creative enough to realize that you can use that same plan in another environment, in a different but interesting way. And that's exactly what happens here. Now needless to say, the scale is actually fairly large, but this does not look like a huge basilica. It's, it's, it's brought down to domestic size scale, as you can see here. So that's a very interesting development. It's very well preserved and I'll show it to you in a moment. So once you get into the atrium, then you have to take an abrupt right in order to see the peristyle court. And the peristyle court is very, very large. We've talked about the fact that there was an increasing interest in the peristyle as a key component of a Roman house. And we see that very clearly here. In fact, the, the peristyle is really beginning to take pride of place away from the atrium, 'because the atrium is almost beginning to go the way of the tablinum, in the sense that it's becoming a kind of passageway. It's not an end in itself, it's becoming, or the atrium and tablinum aren't ends in theirselves, they are a passageway into this huge peristyle. If you look at plan of the peristyle you can see that there are columns, but those columns are engaged into the wall. And that's well preserved; I'll show it to you in a moment. And then also, extremely interesting, is now an axis with the atrium and the huge peristyle, is tr, tr is the triclinium or the dining room. And look at the size of that triclinium and look at the fact that the triclinium opens both off the peristyle and also has an opening on this way, on this end, toward the front toward the other side excuse me, of the of the, of the house. And this is the side, this is the side, the southern side, that faces the sea. And, and Herculenium was very close. I'll show you a restored view that makes this clear in a moment. Herculaneum was very close to the sea. And this, these two houses were probably among the two most expensive houses in Herculaneum, because they had the best views of the sea. They were very up high, above the sea wall, and they looked right out at the sea. So this, the, the way they've designed this very large triclinium to benefit from being able to see both the peristyle and views out over the sea, even while you were dining. There seems to have been a a colo-, a colonaid over here. So views through columns out to the sea. And then these two rooms at D. These are as you can see the diaeta, diaeta singular, diaetae, plural. These are these are rooms that are set aside for, sort of, summer pleasures, summer pleasures near the win-, near the panoramic window that you can look out to the sea. So a place to relax and enjoy the sunshine on the southern end. Views of the sea, a special room set, set aside just for that kind of panoramic viewing and the like. So, this move, again, toward vista, toward panorama, that we've been talking about before. So, some very important changes here that signal where Roman residential architecture will go in the future. I'm going to wait on the plan of the stags until we finish with the mosaic atrium. The mosaic atrium. You can see a view into the atrium today. You can see why the house is called the house of the mosaic atrium because of the very well preserved black and white, strikingly striking black and white mosaic that we find there. And you can see how well preserved the impluvium is with the mosaic decoration around that. You can also see however, if you look carefully at this image, you probably noticed it already, that the floor undulates. Why does the floor undulate? The floor undulates because of that heavy blanket of lava that entered into Herculaneum that, that made it's presence known and that distorted the shape of the of the of floor of the atrium, but fortunately preserved it at the same time, which is great. We're looking from the atrium into the tablinum, and we see that basilican form that we described already before. A central knave a back wall side aisles on either, you can't see this side, but same on this side is on this side. Side aisles and circulation of space among them. And you can also see, if you look very carefully, and l have another view in a moment, that there are windows here as well. Windows that allow light into the system. When we talked about the basilica of Pompeii, I mentioned to you that the basilica of Pompeii did not have a clerestory, clerestory, did not have a clerestory. But that we would, we would begin to see the development of the clerestory later. We see it here. This use of a clerestory is the placement of windows in that second story to allow light into the structure. It has been developed here. It's a very important architectural development, and we're going to see again the ramifications of that into the future. Here's another view of the of, of what is of this banqueting hall. And by the way the technical name for this, and I have it on the monument list for you, is the Egyptian oecus or the oecus Aegyptiacus, the oecus Aegyptiacus or if it's easier for you the Egyptian oecus, that, that this particular form of banqueting hall in the shape of a basilica. This, this view is helpful not only because you can see the piers better, but also because you can see the windows better, the clerestory system that allows light into the space. And you can also see this ubiquitous use of white and red for the piers, in this case, just as they are usually used for columns. The uppermost part of the pier is white, and then they painted the bottom red. So very similarly to the kind of decor we saw also in Pompeii. This is of course the peristyle court. You can see it here, and you can see the way in which these columns have been engaged into the wall of the garden court. You can also see this interesting use of combination of stone and tile for the construction. Also interesting, as you look at the rooms that line the side of the peristyle, you can see how open up, how opened up they have become. We don't see that severe wall, that we saw in the very earliest Domus Italica, with no windows, as you'll recall. There are lots of windows here, and they are large windows and they are allowing light into the structure. Not just on the front where the views are, but on the other sides of the building. This is again, a very important change and one that is going to have, again important ramifications for the future. Note also that the famous Pompeian red, is used to, to decorate the walls. So that's the House of the Mosaic Atrium now lets turn to the House of the Stags; the House of the Stags so called because of a sculpture that was found there that I'll show you a bit later. If we look at the House of the Stags, we see some interesting things happening as well that seem to parallel the development we've already described. This house too, built between' 62 and' 79. The entrance in this case is on the upper-most right. Right here. And you can see that you enter in along a fauces, along a, a the throat of the house, into what is designated as the atrium. But that atrium is not like any other atrium we've seen thus far this semester. What's missing? >> Impluvium >> The impluvium, the impluvium is missing. If there's no Impluvium, there's no compluvium which means that the room is not open to the sky. And we call, we call an atrium that has no opening, and I put this in the monument list for you, an atrium testudinatum. And atrium testudinatum is an atrium that has no no opening to the sky. And that's the case here. That also is, tends to underplay the space, because it's no longer as interesting as it was when it had that wonderful basin and the, and the skylight and so on and so forth. And if you look at the plan you'll see, it's very interesting; there's lots of openings on various sides. So here, this is a really good example of what I was hinting at before and that is the atrium beginning to go the way of the tablinum, the atrium beginning to become a passageway from one part of the house to another. It really is merely a passageway from the outside, from the faucase, into the other rooms of the house. What have recieved the greatest emphasis by the patron and by the designer is not the atrium but is the triclinium or dining hall. And you can see that there are two of them and they are they are placed in relationship to one another axial relationship to one another. So they are almost talking to one another; there's like a dialogue an architectural dialogue between that smaller triclinium and this larger triclinium across an open courtyard, across an open courtyard. So here we see again, the triclinium beginning to emerge as the single, most important room in the house, which obviously sig-, signals, what's going on in these houses, that people are beginning to us them even more than they did before not only as places of business but as places to to enjoy fabulous dinner parties. And while you can look out over the sea, and in fact if you look at this triclinium, the larger one, you can see again, it opens both off the garden court and also opens toward the south where you would have seen the views of the sea; all of this very deliberate. We see the dietae here as well these summer living spaces with views out over the water. And here we see an interesting detail which is a kind of kiosk or gazebo that's located in the front and, that actually still survives, and I'll show that to you in a moment. So, again, quite momentous changes in architectural in, in residential architecture in Herculaneum and in Campania in general in the late 1st century AD. This is a restored view, very helpful because we can use it to illustrate a number of things. We can use it to illustrate how close to the see Herculaneum was. We can use it to look at the sea walls that I talked about before, we can use it to look at the, the harbor the small boat dock that was down here, with boats waiting. This is, this was the place that people ran to, in order to escape the onslaught of Vesuvius. And this is exactly in the seawall is exactly where those bodies were found; so they made it this far, but not far enough. And we can pick out both the house of the mosaic atrium right here, and the house of the stags over here, both of them very large as you can see. You can see in the case here, in the northern end, you can see in this case with the house of the mosaic atrium, the complubium off the atrium that we described, the mosaic atrium. You can see the open court here. You can see the en-, the side that faces the sea and how opened up it is, how many windows there were, how much, how open the, diaetae on either side how you can get nice views. Here the House of the Stags, same sort of thing. You see no opening whatsoever in the northern end; no opening in the ceiling, no compluvium. You do, you see the two triclinia facing one another across the open court. And you see that little gazebo entranceway, a gazebo that again, looks out towards the sea, a distinctive detail. Here are a couple more views just to show you quickly the, that if you go and visit Herculaneum, you can still see those seawalls, there, made out of concrete. As you can see they're well worth taking a look at. And this is a view, taken this is one of the ways you can enter into the city taken across, you can see Vesuvius in the background and you can see the, this is a house of the mosaic atrium that we've been looking at. This is the house of the stags, and you can tell the difference because of the little gazebo, little kiosk in front. And here you can see again so well the way this is positioned high up on the wall with spectacular views of the sea. And this opening up of the wall to allow maximum vista max, maximum panorama through that, through those spaces in the house. Note the kiosk here and then note this other entrance. I'm going to show you both of those in detail. This is a little gazebo; as you can see it rests on piers. It was obviously a very pleasant place to sit with marble, furniture on top of a glass wine out here looking out over the sea. And you can see once again that the piers have been stuccoed over, white on top, red on the bottom, just as we have seen, this so characteristic also of Pompeii. And right behind that other entranceway that I can also show you, where you can see if you look very closely, you can see not only the red paint on the plasters, but also the very elaborate decoration in blue and white of the pediment above. This gives some sense also of the kind of decorative sculpture there would have been in buildings like this: the marble tables, the the, these wonderful statues. There are two of them of stags being attacked by hounds. And these are, these stags are what have given this house its name: The house of the stags.
