DRAFT

House of the Sundial

Contributor: Lai Ching Tsui
Published: 2021-04-21
Modified: 2025-06-29

Location

Location Description

Baelo Claudia began in the late second century BC as a center for trade with North Africa through Tangier and for salting fish and production of garum, or fish sauces. Baelo's high point was reached about the time of Claudius, when it was made a municipium. An earthquake in the second century AD hastened its decline, though there was some revival in the third century, until it was totally abandoned by the seventh century AD. Nowhere else in the Iberian peninsula is it possible to find all the elements of Roman urbanism in such good condition: forum, temples of the capitol to the traditional gods of the Romans, a temple to an oriental divinity (in this case, Isis), curia, administrative buildings, market, theater, baths, aqueducts, private houses, an industrial zone, and a complete city wall. Only an arena seems missing.

The two private houses where there may have been gardens are near the port and are right next to the fish processing establishments – but upwind of them. They were excavated and documented in the early 1920's by P. Paris and each occupy some 500 square meters. They faced each other with a street with porticoes on both sides between them. Both were two-story houses organized around a central peristyle courtyard. In the first, House 1 or West house, it seems highly probable that there was a garden. In the second, the House of the Sundial, one source may be read to imply that the center of the peristyle was paved in opus signinum and thus could not be a garden. Another reading of the same passage, however, puts the opus signinum only on the gutters around the perimeter of the courtyard.

Garden

Villa del Cortijo de los Vila

Keywords

Garden Description

Located across the colonnaded street from West house was the House of the Sundial. This house had a rectangular peristyle courtyard with four columns on the long side and three on the shorter side, gutters around the edges, and a well in the center. According to Sillières, the courtyard was paved in opus signinum and thus did not have a garden, though potted plants may have given the appearance of a garden. Room [19] on the northeast corner of the peristyle was connected to the fish preserving operation just to the north. Perhaps the occupant of the house ran the fish business.

Maps

Images

Map of Baelo Claudia. Adapted from Sillières.
Fig. 2: Plan of the two port houses. From Sillières.
Photo of the two port houses, seen looking west. The peristyle of the House of the Sundial is in the left foreground.

Dates

unspecified

Bibliography

  • A. Balil Iliana, 'Casa y urbanismo en la España antigua. Casa familiar y vivienda colectiva en la España romana,' Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueología, XXXIX, Universidad de Valladolid (Valladolid 1973), 138-140.(worldcat)
  • P. Sillières, M. Fincker, J.M. Labarthe,Baelo Claudia: une cité romaine de Bètique, Collection de la Casa de Velázquez 51 (Madrid 1995), 165-170.(worldcat)

Places

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