Room 6

Renée Forsell

This almost square room is the middle one in a row of three flanking the W side of the atrium. The upper parts of the walls are reconstructed in modern times. The E wall, on both sides of the door opening towards the atrium, is built mainly in brick sized tufa blocks in op. quadratum. It is unusually thick, 0.5 m. The fact that it stands on the threshold, and that the N and S walls are built into it, suggests a rebuilding aiming at reinforcement of these walls.
Beam holes in the S wall shows the room had an upper floor. The N wall is only standing the height of the wall plaster upper zone and consequently no beam holes are preserved. There is no traces of any staircase in the room instead the upper floor was accessed from the neighbouring taberna 31 through a door in the upper part of the west wall.

The cocciopesto floor with inlayed pieces of travertine is preserved in the N and S part of the room. This floor has been cut through diagonally from the threshold to the SW corner when a drain was made from the impluvium to a cistern in taberna V 1,31 west of this room. The new cocciopesto covering the drain is almost totally gone.

The wall plaster is preserved mainly in the lower zone. In the middle and upper zone what remains is much damaged.