Samnite House, Ancient Roman domus in Herculaneum, Italy.
The Samnite House is a Roman private home in Herculaneum that displays a central atrium with reception rooms and service spaces arranged around it. The structure follows the traditional Roman residential design with rooms organized to provide both social and practical functions.
This residence was built in the 2nd century BCE and remained occupied until Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. The volcanic disaster preserved the structure, capturing a moment frozen in time from daily Roman life.
The house reflects how local communities blended Samnite building customs with Roman ideas in their daily spaces. You can see this mixture in the way rooms connect and how they were decorated.
You can reach this residence by entering through the main portal located where two main streets intersect in the site layout. The pathways through the archaeological area are marked, making it easy to navigate between different structures.
The south-facing wall contains an elevated support connected to the water supply system that served the city, with carved markings about water rights still visible. This reveals how individual homes were linked to the larger public infrastructure network.
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