Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World

In Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World, Alexander G. McKay examines simple houses, mansions, estates, and palatial buildings, and he pays particular attention to accounts of ancient writers that deal with such topics as house design, interiors, furnishings, and gardens. Describing innovative high-rise apartments, her compact civic squares, large public buildings, temples, shopping centers, and commercial areas, he shows that Roman civilization was astonishingly similar to our own. He also discusses the conditions of life in the Roman provinces, where recent discoveries have shed fresh light on private and communal living. McKay has enhanced the text by the inclusion of over 150 illustrations of plans, sites, and reconstructions.

For many years I have seen pictures in books and online of fragments and ruins of buildings, which can be interesting but seeing the pictures in the context of a complete floor plan brings a sudden epiphany of how our forebearers lived. I spent 7 hours surfing on the net looking at the pictures online for a number of the palaces and houses included in this book and dreaming of an itinerary covering almost all of western Europe,northern Africa and great areas of the near and mid East. Now I need to go out and win a very large lottery to afford it.