Insula (building)

Remains of the top floors of an insula near the Capitolium and the Insula dell'Ara Coeli in Rome

In Roman architecture, an insula (Latin for "island", pl.: insulae) was one of two things: either a kind of apartment building, or a city block.[1][2][3] This article deals with the former definition, that of a type of apartment building.

Insulae housed most of the urban citizen population of ancient Rome's massive population ranging from 800,000 to 1 million inhabitants in the early imperial period.[4] Residents of an insula included ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status (the plebeians) and all but the wealthiest from the upper-middle class (the equites).

The traditional elite and the very wealthy lived in a domus, a large single-family residence, but the two kinds of housing were intermingled in the city and not segregated into separate neighborhoods.[5] The ground-level floor of the insula was used for tabernae, shops and businesses, with living spaces above. Like modern apartment buildings, an insula might have a name, usually referring to the owner of the building.[6] The owners of these buildings were typically wealthy Romans, often of senators and those of similar rank.[4] It was also possible for an insula to be owned by several people, such as Cicero, who owned a one-eighth share of an insula and presumably took in one-eighth of its revenue.[4] The inhabitants of the insula paid rent to secure their accommodation.

  1. ^ Gregory S. Aldrete (2004). Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii and Ostia. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 78–80. ISBN 978-0-313-33174-9.
  2. ^ Stephen L. Dyson (1 August 2010). Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City. JHU Press. pp. 217–219. ISBN 978-1-4214-0101-0.
  3. ^ Chaitanya Iyyer (1 December 2009). Land Management. Global India Publications. p. 147. ISBN 978-93-80228-48-8.
  4. ^ a b c Holleran, Claire; Claridge, Amanda (24 September 2018). A companion to the city of Rome (1 ed.). Hoboken, NJ. p. 318. ISBN 978-1-4051-9819-6. OCLC 1082874027.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ^ Aldrete, Gregory S. (2007). Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 213. ISBN 9780801884054.
  6. ^ Names known from inscriptions or literary sources include Bolaniana, Sertoriana, Vitaliana, Eurcapriana, Felicles or Felicula, Cuminiana, and Arriana Polliana. Brouwer, Hendrik H. J. (1989). Bona Dea: The Sources and a Description of the Cult. Brill. pp. 26–27. ISBN 9004086064.