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House of the Fountains
Excavation:
Identified occasionally in 1907, it was dug
between August and October of 1939 and
then, under the mosaics, starting 1953.
Partial surveys (Dir. Virgílio H. Correia)
in 1990.
Available documentation:
Plan scale 1/100 of R. Monturet (CNRS, Pau,
1980), subsequently completed and
reviewed by Virgílio H. Correia.
Redrawn by J. Luís Madeira and published
in CMRP I.
Brief Description:
Ínsula of residential character. Bibliography
of the excavation: There were not published
excavation reports. All the archaeology of
the house was studied in Oleiro 1992.
Other references:
Alarcão 1983, 202 and fig. 56; id. 1986, 75
and 100-101; id. 1988, 189-190; id. 1992,
54-59; id. 1998 I, 115-6 and II2, 99; Alarcão
et al. 1979, 890 and fig. 7; ibid. 1981, 69-71
and est. 1 and 11-16; ibid. 1986, 130; ibid. 1992,
143-158; Beeson 1993, 2-5; Correia 1997, 39-40 e 48 fig. 19; id. 1999,
16-17; DGEMN 1948 fig. 31-38; Etienne 1997, 276; Ferrão 1996, 206-207;
Oleiro 1965, 259-262; id. 1986, 113-118 e 125-127; id. 1992, 9-29; 1994a,
46-47; id. 1994b, 274 - 6; Oleiro et al. 1974, 17-21; Pedroso 1992, 159-166.
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The house of the fountains is a great Roman residential building whose original
construction, dated the beginnings of the I st century, extended for two
floors, making use of a natural slope of the zone of the town where it was
implanted, that allowed to develop two independent façades, almost completely
used to install small stores and workshops. In the beginnings of the II
century this building was deeply remodelled, the stores and workshop almost
disappearing, the lower floor was fill up almost completely and in the upper
floor transformed into the great residence whose remains are nowadays visible.
The entrance of the house was made through a small square ornamented by
an arch, and opened up in an exedra, through which one passed to the great
lobby. Another entrance gave direct access to a long corridor of services,
having maintained in this zone of the house some small semi-independent
divisions that must have had commercial use.
The lobby opened for the central peristyle by openings, surmounted by other
divisions. The peristyle concentrates the largest amount of mosaic figured
panels, part of them belonging to the original program, other fruit of successive
repairs.
The central peristyle was the essential piece of the house, decorated by
landscaped box-gardens built in the impluvium, surrounded by mosaics and
fountains. The main compartments of the house which opened to the peristyle
were the exedra to the south, decorated by a mosaic represented marine and
dionysian themes and the triclinium to the west that allowed a sight of
the garden through the windows opened on a U shaped basin.
To the North of the triclinium there was a group of compartments that seem
to have constituted the private part of the house. The mosaics here were
of quality and thematically notable and there was a direct access to the
garden. There is another secondary peristyle, but the north part of the
house is not still completely dug.
The centre of the residential area of the house was to the South, a series
of four compartments around a small peristyle with nympheunn reached through
a corridor from the Southwest corner of the central peristyle. Three of
the compartments seem to have been cubicles (the most intense use of two
of them is testified by the bad state of conservation of its mosaics); the
largest, adorned with the mosaic of the hunt, was probably a cenatio; is
also to be found here the mosaic of Silenus.
To the Southwest there was the zone of services: a pantry with direct access
to the triclinium; a kitchen close to the independent access to the street;
personnel's lodgings and of support areas facing the garden.
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