Identification E. Rodríguez-Almeida has tentatively suggested that the fragment was the corner of a slab (AG 1980, p. 171, pl. 60). As to the function of the double courtyard building, he muses that it looks like a warehouse (horreum) but concludes that the double entrances to the courtyards make it more likely that the building served as living quarters for specific groups, perhaps workers. Despite the difference in the size of the letters and the great distance between them, Rodríguez-Almeida merges the two lines and reconstructs the inscription that labeled the building as [PRASI]NA/BE[NETA](AG 1980, p. 171). Another possibility is to identify the structures as shopping bazaars, characterized by D. Reynolds as tabernae facing in on court spaces (for examples of such on the Plan, see Reynolds 1996, fig. 3.21). The prominent inscriptions like the two in this fragment render this interpretation unlikely, however. While large warehouse structures generally are labeled on the Plan, the only group of shops deemed worthy of a label is the macellum in fr. 157. The rectilinear layout and seemingly utilitarian nature of the building in this fragment place the piece in the S corner of the Plan, in an area of Rome that was flat, close to the Tiber, and occupied by similar buildings (see for example the architecture in fragment groups 24, 25, 28, 33, and 34).

Significance The fragment is important in that it depicts a type of commercial or combined commercial and residential structures that made up a large part of Rome's non-monumental cityscape.

Text by Tina Najbjerg