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House
of Cantaber The baths of the house » Excavation: Some surveys between 1873 and 1899. Excavations under the direction of Prof. V. Correia from 1930 to 1934, completed in 1938. Investigation program (Virgílio H. Correia) from 1995 to 1997. Available documentation: Plan 1/50 (Virgilio H. Correia) 1995/1998. Summary characterization: Insula of residential character. Bibliography of the excavation: Reports of excavation were not published, just sparse references. Bibliographical referencesces: Alarcão 1983, 202; id. 1986, 78 and 101-103; id. 1988, 190; id. 1992, 20-25; id. 1998 I, 276-8 e II2, 99; Alarcão et al. 1979, 890; ibid. 1981, 71-73 e est. 2-4 e 18- 19; ibid. 1986, 131; Beeson 1993, 7-8; Correia 1930, 173, id. 1936, 9 and10-14; id. 1999, 17-19; DGEMN 1948 fig. 7-16 e 39; Ferrão 1996, 189-232; Oleiro 1986, 115; id. 1994a, 44; id. 1994b, 276-8; Oleiro et al. 1974, 24-26;Pedroso 1992, 161 nº1.  |
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The house of Cantaber occupied a very central insula in the urban pattern of Conimbriga. With one of the small sides opened to the trivium that is nodal in the vicus novus of the East part of the city (increased by the Augustan wall to the old perimeter of the indigenous town) the closing of the house on all the three remaining sides (except to the door of the area of services) would itself contribute to make converge in the entrance portico the attention of the wayfaring people. The enormous lobby, in an arrangement that is known also in the house of the fountains opens up for the central peristyle by three empty spaces of unequal width (the central wider). The central peristyle of 6 x 8 columns (counting twice the one in the corners) organized all the spaces of the house, but was contained in its openings: a cell to North, three (before four) doors to South, an exedra to the right. The exedra is of small dimensions and its modest mosaic, with great ornamental effect however, did appeal to a not very noble material as the ceramic tesserae. The central basin of the peristyle reproduces, in a simple outline turned grandiose for the dimensions, the pattern of the garden-islands implanted in a mirror of water that is known in Conimbriga and that has been attributed echoes of the imperial architecture of Rome. A system of multiple fountains existed here also, (discovery that is due to the excellent conservation work carried out), and ornamental program of statuary of small dimensions should have existed, occupying the plinths whose bases are detected systematically as square cuttings that open up in the flagstones that finish the mosaic in the intercolumnations or, where they lack, as the increased mortar lumps that supported them. The statuette of Minerva, that is one of the better known discoveries of Conimbriga, was found in the central tank, but it is not sure that it was one of the statuettes in subject, its too small dimension doesn't seem compatible with about 15 x 15 cm of the, plinths. Axially at the far end of the peristyle one would enter the triclinium. The visual axis was prolonged outside through the window at the end and, once entered, the visitor was struck by the multiplication of axis, bilaterally, through the lateral windows, next to the tanks, in the same way that passages gave access the other sectors of the house, the one of the lobulated peristyle (that should have been a larder) to the zone of services. This scenography was architectonic and socially the fulcrum of the house and, two steps inside of the triclinium, the visitor is sensibly at half distance in the space that the house occupies. To the left of the South wing of the peristyle one had access to the sector of lobulated peristyle. The the western sector could be reached directly from the lobby, which was a cella ostiaria, provided of a fire place on stone socle. A corridor, that won an important difference in level (it is not completely clear it had steps) gave access to a service room and, through a narrow corridor installed on a sewer, to the peristyle. For this one two rooms opened : covered with simple mosaic, but that seems to have had an emblema, incompletely dug, but that seems to reconstitute as a cenatio. Returning to the lobby one had access, by the left of who entered, to the residential sector of the house. The great rectangle, drawn by the rooms that open to the pi shaped peristyle or that communicate with these, constitutes without a doubt, the privited part of the house, endowed with cubicles and of an special cenatio. Its construction seems to have been homogeneous although sometimes remodelled at the level of the decoration (stuccos and the peristyle); therefore it is a main part, of the more remarkable phase of the existence of the house. One of the rooms, covered with a simple white mosaic, just as the adjacent corridors, served as transition to a too immediate access to the peristyle. Opened up to it a small cell and to the corridor open up a small cubicle whose entrance was constituted by door and a grilled gate (?)set down on a small stone threshold. The peristyle was entered through the Southwest corner. In the left wing there was a door for the great room whose location, dimensions and pattern of pavement of mosaics (assuming our restitution is correct) they allow to identify a cenatio. In the South wing they was a large cubicle, of whose decoration we known little, given the degradation suffered by the structure, but that should also have echoes of the pattern used in the room of the hunting at the House of the fountains (pilasters framing panels), and another room whose function was more of a corridor than of sojourn judging by its prolonged plan and by the function of circulation it unavoidably had. Cubicle and corridor communicate not only through the peristyle, but also directly. At the bottom of this corridor there was another cubicle that, then opened to a reception room that articulated three different blocks of the house. This room, besides giving access, as we saw, to the residential part of the house, opened, through a door of two windowsills and door latch, to the central peristyle. It also opened, to one of the wings of the lobulated peristyle. This entrance was marked by two columns and, in the mosaic, by a rug with geometric decoration. This architectonic demarcation of the main axis of circulation is very interesting in the sense in that it contrasts with other points morphologically identical in the structure of the house, but that don't have comparable architectonical apparatus. This succession of compartments was, therefore, demarcated by an entrance space provided with facilities for personnel that kept the entrance and for a room whose relationship with the surrounding spaces can be altered as to circumstances (the door with door latch) but whose axis of normal circulation is symbolically marked. The group of the compartments are, possibly, the most interesting of the house. Unhappily, it is one that suffered most the times of abandonment, burying and re-exposition of the house. Of its mosaics two remain in good conditions and there are vestiges of other three, while two other were completely lost, but its architecture in the essential, resisted. One entered in this sector by the Southwest corner, from the residential part of the house, through, or entered through, or directly from the central peristyle, or from the main triclinium. The entrance is made obliquely: though, it is the axialiality of the group that is remarkable. The peristyle is flanked by three pairs of rooms od different type. To the West open for the wings and have a curious window directly opened to the impluvium. To the East constitute a type of isolated pavilions by the open rooms that establish the true axis of this sector, which links the door of access of the residential part of the house to the access door to the garden. These open rooms have its pavement covered by identical mosaic, that reinforces the axiallity. The fundamental axis of circulation between the residential part and the garden of the house is framed by a group of rooms that should classifyed as diaetae. The scenography is also important here . To the visitor and beyond, a supplemental axis is offered more intimate, to see the garden. A parallel axis, more impressive, are the inhabitant's last redoubt (what explains the placement chosen for the group) and it is at the door that we found that curious apotropaic motive the Mogor type labyrinth. The garden The pre-existent garden, that would appear to the visitor,as a vast peristyle, would crown the house. The basin axial to the triclinium, was very probably a type of Canopus, reaching perhaps the portico (disposition identical to that reduced). The remain tenuous vestiges of what was the arrangement and plantation of the garden. The group of the truncated peristyle and of the two rooms that open for him, is an interesting testimony of the application in Conimbriga of an architectonical outline of aulic spirit, the one of the apse room that in this case, lacking space to drawn as in other well-known cases, chooses an implantation and makes use of an unnecessary technical device (the raised level that forces the approach by steps), to impose the intended scenographic effect 
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