Perhaps most importantly of anything that I show you today are the apartment houses of Ostia, and it's to those that I'd like now to turn. What you're looking at on the screen is a model of what one of these apartment houses would have looked like. This one is the so-called Insula of Serapis. The Insula of Serapis, and we're looking at it in a model that is in that museum of casts that I've referred to a number of times this semester at a place, at a part of Rome called EUR. That area that was built up in the Fascist period by Mussolini in the 1930s. It's in, this model is in that museum. And it gives us as good an idea as anything I could show you of what one of these apartment houses looked like in its heyday, in the time of Hadrian. The word insula, I should mention it can be used in two ways. An insula either refers to an apartment, a multistoried apartment house, or it refers to a block of houses in a city like Ostia. It's used, for whatever reason, it, it was used interchangeably to refer to either a block or to an individual house so pay attention to that when you read about an insula or insulae. Again, this one dates to the second century AD, the, the Insula of Serapis, and it basically was like a modern condominium. And often, more than one of these insulae were, clearly next to one another, but more than one sometimes shared a common bath. So they would sometimes build a bathing, a bath building that would be used by those who lived in those two apartment houses. Now what's characteristic of this, and especially, if we think about it, think about it, in relationship to early domus architecture that we saw at Pompeii, those single family dwellings, is the need in this teeming commercial city to accommodate a very large population in a small amount of space. People on the whole who could not afford single-family dwellings who needed to be housed in these apartment buildings. They build up vertically. And as you can see, they go up to as many as five stories. And we see that the Insula of Serapis was indeed a five-storied structure. It is made out of concrete, it is faced with brick. And what is particularly interesting about the brick facing here, and this is going to be our first example of this at Ostia, is the fact that some point the Romans realized that brick was really attractive in its own right. And it didn't need to be stuccoed over anymore. If you think back to the Domus Aurea, even in the Domus Aurea, the building was made out of, the palace was made out of concrete faced with brick, but the facade was gilded, and inside you'll remember, Fabulus was commissioned to cover the entire the entire interior of the structure with stucco and then paint it. So you would have had no sense when you were standing in the palace of Nero in Nero's day, that it, that it was a brick-faced concrete structure. But somewhere along the way, and it comes to the fore in the second century AD, they realized, hey, this brick is actually pretty attractive in its own right. It has texture. We can vary the color. We can use a reddish brick. We can use a slightly yellowish brick. We can add some stucco to make some decorative effects. This looks awesome. And we think we, you know, we, we, some, some innovative architects got the idea, and innovative designers, to, let's leave it, let's not stucco it over. Let's let it speak for itself. And that was a very wise decision, because as you'll see today, the, the buildings that we have remaining from Ostia that were unadulterated brick exteriors, without stucco, are absolutely magnificent and, and they, and they became the arch, the designers became real experts at rendering it in an extraordinary way. I think you can get a sense of that even in this model, so, exposed brick work here. You see these arches made of bricks that are kind of wedge-shaped and, and look like the sort of thing we saw earlier in stone, those wedge-shaped sections of stone that we saw for example in the Falerii Novi gate, we see that sort of thing here. It may have been used just as it was in the Pantheon. You'll remember how they use then during the building process to keep the concrete from settling before it dried, but they realized afterwards that these could be positioned in a way that made them very attractive In their own right, ultimately. We can also see that they have added moldings, usually, with stucco. Added moldings that have, that make the building more attractive. Sometimes even little pediments, as you can see over some of the windows over here. So they come up with strategies to make this brick look even more attractive than it was on its own. Note also the shops in the first story. Some of these are shops, some of these are actually staircases that lead you to the uppermost stories. And once again, it's clear that the Romans have become so adept using concrete, that they are able to open up this walls, the, the openings are larger, than they had been, even before and so they're, they've become very good at, at, at dematerializing the wall In a way that becomes increasingly sophisticated over time. The most famous house at Ostia, is in a sense mine, because it's called the Casa Di Diana, the house of Diana. At Ostia. And we see a view of it here as it looks today. It was a multistoried apartment building, a multistoried insula, only two of those stories are preserved now. I'll show you a restored view of what the original looked like momentarily. But we see it here as it looks today. Concrete faced with brick, exposed brick, brick enjoyed in its own right. Very large openings that lead into, they're either entranceways into the structure, or, or lead to stairways, to staircases, or open up onto shops. We can see here in actuality the same sort of thing we saw in the model from EUR. And that is the use, not only of exposed brick but also of moldings that are added either in brick sometimes or also sometimes in stucco. Of the nice overhangs that they have created above the second story windows up there. We also see a lot of Italian school children, that, that, Ostia and Pompeii also. But particularly Ostia, because of their, its proximity to Rome. And all the schools that they have in the city of Rome. Lots of kids, always out in groups and they, they always, they always seem to have T-shirts of the same color, so you'll see one red school and one yellow school and one blue school. It's a lot of fun. And every one of them has their, it's so funny to me that they have their cell phones and they're all clicking, clicking, clicking as they walk through these buildings. I'm not sure they're looking at anything, but they're definitely clicking to record the fact that they were at Ostia. Perhaps that's for student papers. I don't know. But here a detail of the Insula of Diana looking through one of these entranceways into the rest of the structure. And I'll bet you're as struck as I am in looking at this, that with regard to vista, the interest in panorama and vista, it doesn't matter whether you're building out of rubble or stone or opus incertum or concrete or faced with brick. There is that aesthetic, that Roman aesthetic, of building things in such a way that wherever you're standing in that structure, you're going to be looking from one part of the building to another, and you're going to be struck by the wonderful scenes that you see from, you know, within and from within that building and from the building outside of that structure. Here's the restored view of the Insula of Diana where you can see that originally it was a four storied structure. It's a cutaway in an axiometric view. Four storied structure. And this particular view, this particular restored view is also extremely helpful, because it shows us that these houses did not have the peristyle courts or the hortus that we know from the domus Italica or the Hellenized domus. There was no space for that in this commercial city. There is no emphasis on the greenery and the, and the wonderful, fountains and, and statuary that we saw in Pompeii. And keep in mind of course that Pompeii in Campania was essentially a resort town. A very different kind of feel than Ostia, this teeming commercial center. So what they replaced those with here in order to get more light into the structure, is a kind of a light well. And you see that light well up here. Where there are also windows on multiple stories. And in fact I would imagine that those were the choicest apartments to have, because they would have been less noisy than what you can imagine an apartment along the street must have been, with all the activity going in and out of the thermopolia and the other shops down below, the cart traffic and so on. So, again, I imagine the lightwell apartment would have been highly desirable. Speaking of thermopolia, we have them at Ostia as we have them at Pompeii. Quite a number of them. And I show you the best preserved, which happens to be in Diana's house. And I show it to you here, the thermopolium of the Casa di Diana at Ostia. You can see that right at the entrance way, they have put a black and white mosaic. You see inside just what we saw at just, exactly the same thing that we saw at Pompeii, one of these counters that would have had recesses in it. So you have to imagine just the same as we saw there, a kind of fast food emporium, where you would take a peek at what was what looked good for the day make your choice. If you go inside the thermopoleum of Diana you see hanging on the wall, a painting which it seems likely may have served as a kind of shop sign. It might have been hung outside the building to advertise what you could get in this particular thermopolium. And if we look at what's depicted here it's a still life of objects. And we see what seems to be a pomegranate on the right hanging on a nail on the wall in the center. I don't know if you can see from where you sit, but in the center, a block that supports a, what looks like a drinking cup that has little round things floating in it, lentils or chickpeas or something like that. And then at the far left, there's a plate that also is on a block, a plate that has a carrot and some other vegetables. So this may have been a vegetarian, I guess this was a vegetarian restaurant in Pompeii, one of the healthier places one could go if one wanted a snack in, in, in Ostia, excuse me. For a very long, if, if you go to Ostia, by the way, you really do want to set aside a day to do that, because by the time you take the half an hour ride out there, get there, there's a lot to see and it used to be, if you'd go there for a day, which I've done many, many times there was absolutely nowhere to eat, so you had to remember to bring your, and nowhere to get a bottle of water, so you would have to remember to bring your bottle of water and maybe a snack. But they have rectified that in most, in recent years, the last few years, they have finally put up the caf, caffetteria degli Scavi, which loosely translated, is the, the excavation cafe. The cafeteria of the excavations at Ostia. And it's actually a wonderful place. I have to say, it's very modern. It has a wonderful deck with tables, and the ubiquitous Italian white umbrella where one, and the food is actually, you know, for a cafeteria, ain't bad, but Italian pasta's always hard to make bad. It's always good. And then inside, I thought you'd be amused to see, when they decided on the decor for the interior of the cafeteria, with its, with its simple tables and chairs, they put brick on the wall and they then hung up these wonderful versions of the of the Piazzale Delle Corporazioni, a black and white mosaic. So, again, very attune, the Italians are really, they do build Ferraris, after all. They are very good at at design and aesthetic, and pay a great deal of attention to that, and consequently always make one's surroundings pleasant.
