Macellum
An indoor market that sold provisions (food and the like)
Macellum (plural macella) is a Latin term referring to a place where provisions or foodstuffs were sold in ancient Roman cities, often connected or in close proximity to the forum. As with many Latin terms, it is unclear when reading the ancient sources whether or not macellum is meant to refer to the function of a space, a specific building type, or both. It appears that before 179 BCE macellum was used to refer to a generic “market,” but after 179 BCE it was used more often to refer to a specific building used for selling provisions. Livy, writing in the first century BCE, used macellum and Forum Piscatorium (fish-market) interchangeably, indicating that one of the macella in Rome may have been built at the location that once held the Forum Piscatorium. Varro, writing in the first century BCE, described macella as places where provisions and foodstuffs were all brought together and housed in a building to be sold. This indicates that macellum referred to both the function of the space and the building itself (Walker, 2004). Macella were typically enclosed, square shaped buildings with tabernae (shops) lining the inside perimeter of the building, and a tholos (a round structure on a podium and surrounded by columns to support a domed roof) at its center. Some macella had double rows of tabernae on each side, with one row facing the inside of the building and the other row facing the street; some also had upper-levels. Some evidence suggests that the tabernae in a macellum may have been grouped together based on the types of goods sold; one example being the grouping of stalls with infrastructure consistent with the butchering, storing, and selling of meats. Some scholars view the introduction of macella as a purposeful attempt to separate the Forum Romanum from its original use as a marketplace, though others believe that the Forum Romanum was simply running out of room for commercial space and that the first macellum was built out of necessity rather than out of an attempt to change the function of the Forum Romanum (Walker, 2004).
Bibliography
Latin Dictionary Entries
Macellum - Perseus Digital Library
Jay Brodzeller, 2022