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In the typical Roman dwelling, the rooms were grouped about the
atrium, which, by means of an opening in its roof, also served as a
court. Other courts were sometimes later added, which were
normally unroofed so as to serve as gardens. Multi-storey houses
called insulae, anticipated modern apartment buildings. These
buildings enjoyed privacy, just as the houses in Greece did, however
the facades of these buildings were not empty because the outer
rooms were let as shops. A third type of Roman dwelling was the
luxurious country villa built by wealthy citizens to escape the
congestion and squalor of the cities. These buildings had many of
the rooms, mainly the principal ones that enjoyed the beautiful
views of the surrounding countryside. It was in their houses that the
Romans first started to make strong use of imported marbles for
columns, for covering walls (with approx. 10mm sheets of polished
marble) and for pavements. When walls were not covered in marble
sheets, it was given various layers of stucco and then paintings or
decorations were applied to the ‘refined’ facet of the wall. Probably,
the most interesting type is the second because the paintings
started to imitate the reality on the outside of the walls (which
started approximately in the first century BC), giving new
dimensions and redefining the interior space of these houses.
Buildings had also balconies, that could be open or roofed, and in
streets there were also public fountains. Rome at this time had
quite a large population, which produced a large housing congestion
in the central part of the city, resulting in multi-storey buildings
constructed with timber frames and mud-brick walls. Because of
this, fires and fall downs of buildings were very common, until the
fire in 64 AD led to rebuilding in a more considerate way.
It was in this period that the most important works in civil and public
interest began to be built. These included several road networks,
bridges, aqueducts, new defence walls for expanding and new cities,
and various other public works that were needed to accommodate
for the expanding population needs of the empire. Town planning
followed the style of building of the typical Roman Military Camp.
Like military camps, they had two main roads that crossed the city
vertically and horizontally, called the Cardo and the Decumanus.
The bridges and the aqueducts are probable the biggest
achievement of Roman civil engineering. The architects of the time
understood how to transfer load through arches and build these
sometimes-enormous structures with considerably few material
(because of the void left by the opening of the arches). Aqueducts
are also very important because these show how the engineers of
the time solved the problem of the supply of water, by constructing
stone pipes over structures similar to bridges which served the
purpose of compensating for the contours of the ground so as to
finally achieve a proper angle of inclination so as for the water to
move by means of gravity from sources of water up in high regions
to the cities where water was needed.