A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revisedHamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
History
A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revised
Hamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
Architecture -- History
The smaller tombs varied greatly in size and form. Some were vaulted
chambers, with graceful internal painted decorations of figures and vine
patterns combined with low-relief enrichments in stucco. Others were
designed in the form of altars or sarcophagi, as at Pompeii; while
others again resembled ædiculæ, little temples, shrines, or small towers
in several stories of arches and columns, as at St. Rémy (France).
+PALACES AND DWELLINGS.+ Into their dwellings the Romans carried all
their love of ostentation and personal luxury. They anticipated in many
details the comforts of modern civilization in their furniture, their
plumbing and heating, and their utensils. Their houses may be divided
into four classes: the palace, the villa, the _domus_ or ordinary house,
and the _insula_ or many-storied tenement built in compact blocks. The
first three alone concern us, and will be taken up in the above order.
The imperial +palaces+ on the Palatine Hill comprised a wide range in
style and variety of buildings, beginning with the first simple house of
Augustus (26 B.C.), burnt and rebuilt 3 A.D. Tiberius, Caligula, and
Nero added to the Augustan group; Domitian rebuilt a second time and
enlarged the palace of Augustus, and Septimius Severus remodelled the
whole group, adding to it his own extraordinary seven-storied palace,
the Septizonium. The ruins of these successive buildings have been
carefully excavated, and reveal a remarkable combination of
dwelling-rooms, courts, temples, libraries, basilicas, baths, gardens,
peristyles, fountains, terraces, and covered passages. These were
adorned with a profusion of precious marbles, mosaics, columns, and
statues. Parts of the demolished palace of Nero were incorporated in the
substructions of the Baths of Titus. The beautiful arabesques and
plaster reliefs which adorned them were the inspiration of much of the
fresco and stucco decoration of the Italian Renaissance. At Spalato, in
Dalmatia, are the extensive ruins of the great +Palace of Diocletian+,
which was laid out on the plan of a Roman camp, with two intersecting
avenues (Fig. 64). It comprised a temple, mausoleum, basilica, and other
structures besides those portions devoted to the purposes of a royal
residence.
[Illustration: FIG. 64.--PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN. SPALATO.]
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