Identification Colonnaded courtyards like those depicted here are common on the Plan. They seem to have served a variety of purposes. Generally, small or medium-sized, colonnaded courtyards are incorporated into bath complexes, serve as garden spaces or vegetable plots in private houses, function as pleasant, open-air areas or work spaces behind rows of tabernae, or as common gardens in apartment complexes. In all these cases, access from the street to the courtyard is limited. The two peristyles situated at center top in this fragment, rendered in their entirety, fit into this category. The only access to the portico at top center was through an easily guarded room at top, which suggests it was a semi-private space. The small rooms attached at top and bottom may indicate it was a private, one-family house, a domus, in which case the portico would have served as a vegetable plot or simply a pleasant retreat from the crowded city. The small rooms would have served as bedrooms, and seasonal dining rooms. The private nature of the building and the large size of the peristyle may also indicate that it functioned as the headquarters (schola) for one of Rome's many guilds or priesthoods (collegia). In this case, the peristyle would have been the space in which the members met and ate their communal meals. The wide room at the bottom with two openings facing the colonnaded courtyard may have been a small shrine for the deity worshipped by the collegium.
The smaller peristyle below was easily accessed from the open space on the left. It may therefore have served a more public function. It was either attached to a large, open space behind shops, in which case it was a communal area used by the shop owners and their families for recreation, or it was part of an apartment complex and therefore used by the tenants as a pleasant outdoor space.
Although the large peristyle to the right is not shown in its entirety, it was obviously a substantial structure. The long, narrow features in its center are similar to those in the center of the Forum of Vespasian, around the Temple of Divine Claudius, and in the unidentified building in fr. 11fgh. They may have represented hedges or other types of plantings in beds. No openings are shown in the part of the building that is represented in this drawing, and it is therefore not possible to know if it was easily accessible or not. The large size of the structure, however, may indicate that it served a more public function than those mentioned above, perhaps as a large market.

Significance The Renaissance drawing is the only existing evidence for this lost fragment.

Text by Tina Najbjerg