Room k

Thomas Staub

This room is situated to the rear, east side of the peristyle. It is entered through a doorway towards the east portico of the peristyle, whereas a window opens up towards the garden. That this room is a later addition is visible in the west wall, where the column of the originally southernmost part of the east portico of the peristyle is integrated in the wall. On the corresponding east wall of the peristyle the same column is made visible as a half column.
Joist sockets in the north wall, another, high placed doorway, again towards the north and a second, upper window towards the garden are indicators for a second floor above this room, reached by means of a staircase, whose base is situated in front of the east wall of the peristyle. Since the south wall is the, in relation to the construction of the upper floor pre-existing partition wall towards the neighbours in the south no joist sockets were cut into that wall. Instead a larger beam ran from the east to west wall in front of the south wall which in its turn supported the beams of the upper floor in a similar solution as the one observed in the remodelled taberna V 1,8.
The east wall of the room shows a large and high niche, stretching over the entire width of the room. The crowning of the niche consists of an arch made of alternating, slightly trapezoid blocks of Sarno stone and red Cruma. The niche is 0.54 m deep and max. 3.84 m high. The niche probably was made in the second half of the first century b.C., judging by the building materials and technique used for the crowning and the northern jamb which in this house are associated with the large rebuilding phase in that period. Before room k was separated from the east portico of the peristyle, this wall formed the endpoint of a viewing axes from the atrium towards the east and thus this niche could, with a proper decoration have functioned as focal point for this viewing axes.