The early Roman town house was little more than a single room known as the atrium. The roof sloped inwards and downwards from all sides to a rectangular opening, beneath which was a basin, the impluvium, set into the floor to catch the rainwater. As time went on, small extra rooms were built inside the atrium against its walls, or separated off by partitions. Town houses did not usually consist of more than one storey, though upstairs dining-rooms are sometimes referred to. Apartments above shops, however, reached by an outside staircase, were a feature of small towns.

Reconstruction of a street in Pompeii. (Illustration by John Pittaway from Picture Reference Ancient Romans, Brockhampton Press 1970)

Urban congestion was a problem in Rome from early …show more content…
(VRoma: Museum of London: Paula Chabot)

Reconstruction of a simple room based on Roman houses excavated in Newgate, London. Furniture, food, and room are replicas. Artefacts on the table - tablets and stylus, dishes, board game - are original. (VRoma: Museum of London: Barbara McManus)

Comparatively wealthy flat-dwellers lived on the ground floor and had access to a public sewer. Even in the purpose-built new-town apartment blocks in in Ostia, it would appear that upstairs private latrines were not connected to any public sewer. Upper-floor tenants in Rome had to make their own arrangements, though there were public lavatories for those who could afford them. The rest had recourse to chamber-pots, the contents of which they emptied into a well at the foot of the stairs, or threw out of the window into the streets below, a practice still prevailing in eighteenth-century Edinburgh, which had a similar population problem.

Public latrines, such as this one in Rome, also served a social function. The trend extended to private houses: the villa at Settefinestre, near Cosa, built in 75 BC, sports a communal lavatory seating twenty people at a time. (VRoma: Leslie