CLASSICAL CIVILISATION

– FURTHER READING AND WEB-LINKS for cc6 –

 

AS Unit CC6 (F386) City Life in Roman Italy: Herculaneum

 

By Mr G. de la Bédoyère MA FSA FHA FRNS for KSHS

This page is in a continuous process of updating and development: last updated 20 February 2010

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PBS's Herculaneum Uncovered  watch the whole film online

 

PRESCRIBED MATERIAL CC6 Herculaneum

(for the other two cities go to Pompeii Prescribed Material and Ostia prescribed material)

 

The following topics are all those that you need to be familiar with in Unit CC6 for the city of Herculaneum. These are links that will help you with most of them. Do be warned though – some of the links are to Wikipedia pages which doesn’t mean they’re necessarily 100% reliable, something that applies to all web pages! I have also added now details of my handouts available to KSHS students on the academic portal:

 

The Four Painting Styles (of vital importance to understanding interior decoration)

 

HERCULANEUM – prescribed content (each building is one you NEED to know about)

a. Wikipedia on Herculaneum

b. Downloadable Map of Herculaneum (this is the map given to visitors at the site: it only shows buildings nominally open to the public – in practice quite a few of those shown aren’t actually open. Trust me, I have visited the site twice between February and October 2009)

 

c. Watch PBS's Herculaneum Uncovered

 

1. House in Opus Craticium (Herculaneum Insula iii.13–15, also known as the Casa Graticio): scroll down the page to find it. The house was built of opus craticium. Its importance is that it was built after the earthquake of AD 62 and replaced an older house. The owners of the site decided to use a cheap form of building (a timber frame packed with rubble) that would allow as much living space as possible to be packed into the small site, presumably to maximise the rent yield. This anticipated the building of apartment blocks a generation later at Ostia, where far more durable building techniques were used. View a virtual tour of the House in Opus Craticium here, but forget trying to visit the place if you go there. You can see it from outside but inside it is now the most dangerous building on site and cannot be accessed. You can enjoy a look-around from the street on my Youtube House in Opus Craticium tour which also shows how light had to be let in through windows cut into the next door house’s atrium. CC6 HO24 (KSHS academic portal)

 

2. House of the Deer/Stags (Herculaneum Insula iv.21, also known as the Casa dei Cervi). This house’s importance depends on its remarkable plan which created a visual axis through the garden right down to the sea. Little emphasis was placed on living accommodation. This picture (left) shows a digitally restored view through the garden to the Bay of Naples. The view today unfortunately just shows a wall of volcanic rock. See the virtual tour of the House of the Deer here or take my Youtube House of the Stags tour (February) or the .House of the Stags in Autumn tour shot in October (much prettier). CC6 HO06 (KSHS academic portal)

 

 

 

3. The Samnite House (Herculaneum Insula v.2). One of Herculaneum’s oldest houses. It went through a number of stages: first the peristyle was sold off to another property. Then an upstairs level was created, overlooking the vast atrium. Then this was partitioned off into a separate apartment leaving just the atrium and a few downstairs rooms. If you want to walk round you can do so with me at Youtube Samnite House, or you can have a look round without me by watching Samnite House tour. Also, take a look at the House of the Grand Portal – this is next door to the Samnite House, and absorbed the Samnite House’s peristyle columns into its walls. Presumably the Samnite House’s owner sold off the peristyle too along with his other modifications. You can see more of the area by watching this film which takes you round the Samnite House, House of the Wooden Partition and the House in Opus Craticium. CC6 HO20 (KSHS academic portal)

 

4. The Suburban Baths (also known as the Terme Suburbane). One of the best-preserved Roman baths in existence. It lies on a terrace below Herculaneum’s main level and is accessed from a piazza on the way down to the old shoreline. It was built in Claudian times. The replica statue of Marcus Nonius Balbus (the original is in Naples Museum) stands in the piazza alongside his monument and this has led to the suggestion his family built the baths, though he himself lived in the late 1st century BC whereas the baths seem to have been built in the AD 40s. You can take a photo tour here. There is an account on the official site, but you can now take the Youtube Suburban Baths tour. You can see the Balbus statue and monument Marcus Nonius Balbus Youtube tour. CC6 HO25 (KSHS academic portal)

 

5. Good private website with pictures and plans of Herculaneum buildings

 

See also the Youtube Herculaneum Baths Tour of the baths in Insula VI close to the Basilica (and NEW: Women's Baths at Herculaneum), the so-called College of the Augustales, the Roman seafront of Herculaneum, a walk through Herculaneum (featuring the House of the Beautiful Courtyard), and a look round the House of the Corinthian Atrium.

 

(for the other two cities go to Pompeii Prescribed Material and Ostia prescribed material)

 

 

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