Conimbriga on Gardens of the Roman Empire

House of the Cantaber

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dates

unspecified

Excavation Dates

unspecified

Garden Description

Hidacio, bishop of Chaves and a chronicler of his age, records that the Suevi sacked Conimbriga in 465 and 468 CE and that in the second year "the most noble Cantaber" was killed and his family sold into slavery. This house is by far the finest inside the city walls, so it is reasonably guessed to be that of Cantaber. It is larger than the House of the Fountains with an area of more than 3,300 square meters. The garden is similar, although it is less elaborate, has slightly different proportions, and has no fountains. Although the house underwent structural alterations, the peristyle is part of the original plan, which does not appear to date from much later than the Flavian era.

Originally, a large area at the south end was a garden occupying nearly a third of the area of the house. It was later sacrificed to become baths, so it is tinted slightly green on the plan in Figure 1. The large dimensions of this house required further open spaces for light and air. Two of these had flower beds, although on a much smaller scale.

South of the central peristyle was a large room that centered on the garden, and on the east side of it a large doorway opened open on a large pool with eight columns around the eastern half of the pool. Along the sides were masonry planters projecting a foot or so into the pool. They must certainly have been filled with earth where plants or flowers must have been grown. The boxes covered in pink mortar are clearly visible in the foreground in Figure 3. Traces of plinths in the spaces between the columns suggest that there may have been small statuettes there.

The other garden area was slightly farther south and against the east wall of the house. A portico ran around three sides but required only three columns, all on the west side. The rectangular pool (6.5 x2.5 m) had three basically square flower beds aligned in it. The two end squares, however, had semicircular niches cut out of the center of each side, while the center square had a circle cut out of its center and connected to the surrounding water. As in the House of the Fountains, flower beds in the pool appeared like islands in a lake (Fig. 4). One can imagine that this secluded spot was a favorite of the most noble Cantaber.

Plans

Fig. 1: House of Cantaber.

Credit: Adapted from Hipólito Correia.

Images

Fig. 2: Main peristyle.

Fig. 3: Pool with pink planters.

Fig. 4: Secluded, three-column portico. Photo S.A.J. 1969.

Bibliography

Morand, I., La Maison aux jets d'eau de Conimbriga (Boccard, Paris, 2005). (worldcat)

Keywords

House of the Fountains

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dates

150 to 175 CE

Excavation Dates

unspecified

Garden Description

This house is almost entirely excavated, the exception being its north facade, which is still covered by a local lane. It occupies an area of almost 3400 square meters. Its mosaics, published in their entirety, date from the second half of the second century CE, or the Severan era. The construction of the house dates to between 150 and 175 CE. The house has a central peristyle with twenty-six columns. The area of the large open part (12m x 26m) is completely filled with a pool with a maximum depth of 0.90 meters, inside of which the architect installed six very formal flower-beds. On the edges of these, more than 500 water-jets played continually. The unusual design of this peristyle has its only parallel in the Domus Augustana built in Rome for the emperor Domitian by the architect Rabirius. This parallel, pointed out by L. Cremain 1959 in his L'architettura, has been related by other writers, none of whom has found anything similar in Roman domestic architecture in any part of the Empire.

The house has recently been the subject of a monograph by Isabelle Morand in which she undertakes to recover the geometrical and numerical principles used by the architect and to identify astronomical and astrological allusions in the house.

Plans

Fig. 1: Plan of the House of the Fountains.

Credit: Adapted from I. Morand.

Images

Fig. 2: Photo of the House of the Fountain in 2007 with the new roof.

Bibliography

Morand, I., La Maison aux jets d'eau de Conimbriga (Boccard, Paris, 2005). (worldcat)

Keywords

House of the Skeletons

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dates

unspecified

Excavation Dates

ca. 1940

Garden Description

The peristyle garden of the fourth domus follows a different pattern. In contrast to the House of the Swastika Mosaic, this house is very squarely centered on the garden. The axis of the entrance bisects the garden and the triclinium on the other side. A shallow rill with a small exedra on this axis winds around the peristyle, leaving a cultivated rectangle in the center. In front of the triclinium there is a square pool, also shallow, lined with slabs of limestone and set into the cultivated area but not joined to the rill.

The large mosaic of the bedroom (Fig. 1, C) was restored in the 1950s; but even originally it was in relatively good condition. Elsewhere in the house, however, there are only a few patches of mosaic owing to the area having been used as a necropolis in the late empire, a use that gave the house the name by which it is now called.

The houses were excavated around 1940, at a time when there was no thought of recovering micro-remains from the soil of the flower-beds, which could have allowed the identification of the vegetal species present in these gardens. There is therefore no evidence as to what was planted. There is also no mention of sculptural elements, which may or may not have been present.

Plans

Fig. 1: Plan of the House of the Skeletons.

Images

Fig. 2: Photo of peristyle at the House of the Skeleton.

Fig. 3: Photo showing the relation of the garden to other rooms of house.

Bibliography

J. Alarcão and R. Etienne, "Les jardins a Conimbriga (Portugal)" in Ancient Roman Gardens, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture,no. 7. 1979, E. B. MacDougall and W. F. Jashemski eds. Washington, D. C., 1981, pp. 67-80. (worldcat)
V. Hipólito Carreia, Conimbriga, Guide to the Ruins, Instituto Portugués de Museus, 2006. (worldcat)

Keywords

House of the Swastika Mosaic

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dates

unspecified; mosaics dated to mid-third century CE

Excavation Dates

unspecified

Garden Description

Far more modest than the House of Cantaber but following the same general ideas of garden design, this house was left outside the new city wall built during the late empire. The mosaics, now in excellent condition after modern restoration, can be dated to the mid third century CE, but the house is the result of several successive transformations. Presumably that history explains why the main room with the mosaic with many swastikas is not aligned with the axis of the garden, though two of its three doorways offered views of it.

Plans

Fig. 1: House of Swastika Mosaic.

Images

Fig. 2: Looking west over swastika mosaic to garden.

Bibliography

Morand, I., La Maison aux jets d'eau de Conimbriga (Boccard, Paris, 2005). (worldcat)

Keywords

mosaics (visual works) (AAT:300015342)