Learning some history about how the Romans lived while playing Minecraft!

I build things using the blocks in minecraft. Usually I build mansions, townhouses or castles but last week I decided to try my hand at a Roman Domus (House). I had a great time learning the layout of a middle to upper class family residence from 2000 years and the names of all the rooms!

I made a YouTube video about it:How to Build A Roman Villa

If you like minecraft or have a child addicted to it, there is an opportunity for learning here! If you can stop them bashing each other with swords for a few minutes and show them the layout of a Domus you may just fire up their imagination! I ended up learning about rooms such as Tablinum, cubiculum, inpluvium and peristylium and many more.

Here is the house from the outside. It has very few windows as the Romans liked to get all their light from an atrium at the front and a colonnaded garden at the back called a Peristylium. This was a sensible way of living in the searing Mediterranean heat. Rooms mostly had one use but the rooms at the back around the garden could be used more in Summer for outdoor eating etc.

Here is the typical house plan with most of the rooms labelled.

• a. Taberna - A shop, could be rented out or run by the family, usually no connection to house from inside.
• b. Cubiculum - There were a series of small bedrooms, one of which could be a latrine
• c. Ala - Unusual spaces at the side of the house, use is fairly unknown and it seems these open spaces faded from popularity
• d. Culina - Kitchen, usually quite dark and smoky - could be run by servants if you can afford it!
• e. Exedra - this flexible semi-outdoor space could be for meetings, lounging or dining
• f. Peristylium - Collonaded garden area used to grow herbs, chill out and some even had a fish pond.
• g. Triclinium - A dining room. It seems this single use room did not used to be something found but later on Romans loved to eat lounging on their sides and separate room was called for.
• h. Impluvium - my favourite space and you can see it in my first picture - I saw these in Pompeii! It is a shallow trench that collected rain water from the open space above. This rain water could be used for bathing, drinking or cooking and often filled up a cystern too!
• i. Atrium. The space containing the impluvium with columns around it.
• j. Vestibulum - The entrance, leading to the atrium along a corridor called Fauces. Keeps the house very private from the street.
  I just wrote all that from memory and did not know any of it beforehand apart from impluvium. It was building it in minecraft that helped me study it and remember all the rooms.