Identification Rows of tabernae are ubiquitous on the Plan, and the type depicted in the top row here is of the most common type seen on the FUR. Each shop consisted of a single room with a wide opening towards the street that could be screened off at night. The owners may have resided with their families on a wooden platform in the back. The unusual number of openings in the front of the rooms in the bottom row may indicate they are not shops but of some other use. Or, the shops were partitioned down the center, leaving one side available for commercial use, the other for use as a residence by the shopowner and his family. This way, each section would have had its own entrance.

Significance This fragment is typical of non-identified fragments of the Plan. No monumental buildings are represented, and the fragment instead provides a view of the lesser known structures that made up the urban fabric of Rome: the residential and commercial buildings.

Text by Tina Najbjerg