Ancient Roman Insula

A Roman insula was the ancient equivalent of a modern apartment building. The word itself is Latin for "island." The urban center of Rome was about 16 square miles, and that space housed approximately 500,000 people, mostly living in the city's more than 40,000 insulae. Only the wealthier Romans could afford a traditional single family domus, and only the very wealthy could afford a villa. The insulae housed the people of lower or middle class economic status. However, while insulae greatly outnumbered domi, the two styles of housing were interspersed throughout the subura section of Rome. The domus style house dominated the wealthier neighborhoods on the hills of Rome.

Insulae were large structures sometimes reaching more than seven stories. Because of the dangers of collapse and fire, during the Principate the legal height of these buildings was limited to about seventy feet, but prior to that the only limiting factors were the difficulty constructing cheap but stable structures that tall, and the reluctance of tenants to rent units to which they needed to climb more than six or seven flights of stairs. The insulae were built of mud brick, particularly on the upper stories, and timbers. Some insulae had running water and primitive toilet facilities on the lower floors. The uppermost floors contained the smallest and least expensive apartments, both to build and to rent.

The average apartment was probably less than 600 square feet, but there was less need for large living quarters in ancient Rome as most people spent a good deal of their time living outside their sleeping quarters. Most apartments did not have kitchens and people bathed and socialized at the public baths. The ground floor of a typical insula and some domi housed shops and restaurants (tabernae). Most often the shop owner would live with his family in the shop itself or he would rent an apartment in the same insula.