Insula
An apartment block built for lower to middle-class Romans (plebs); a city-block
Insula (plural insulae) is a Latin term which literally translates to “island,” but in this context refers to large blocks of connected apartment buildings that were strewn throughout ancient Roman cities. Insula can also refer just to the city-block itself, and - like many Latin terms - it is important to note the context in which the word is being used when determining its intended meaning. In this context, insulae were large apartment buildings that would sometimes cover entire city blocks and provided housing for the majority of Rome’s urban population - both poor and middle classes. Insulae would be multi-story, multi-unit buildings that could sometimes be as tall as eight stories (Gill, 2018). Because of building and plumbing restrictions, the more luxurious and expensive apartments would be located closer to the ground floor, and the cheaper and more dangerous apartments would be located near the top. Upper level apartments were often subject to sub-par building techniques and frequent fires, making them especially dangerous in tightly packed cities where the upper stories were built of wood (Becker, n.d.). Insulae were usually owned by wealthy landlords and property speculators and rented for a profit, and this profit was typically prioritized over safe or sanitary living conditions. These apartments would have been small, probably only 1-2 rooms per unit, and upper-level street-side units often had small balconies from which it became common practice for some to dump garbage or sewage onto the street below (Gill, 2018). Insulae covered large portions of the city and lined major streets, and often the ground floor apartments would have shops, or tabernae, connected to the street-side of the building. These could sometimes be separate from the living quarters above or behind them, but shopkeepers often lived in the apartments their shops were attached to (Storey, 2004).
Bibliography
Latin Dictionary Entry
Insula - Perseus Digital Library
Jay Brodzeller, 2022