The inhabited area
Of the private Poseidonia age of Greek you know very little, except in some quarters of a house brought to light by recent excavations in one block east of the sanctuary of Athena. Built to 530 BC and abandoned around 470 BC, was probably placed in a suburb town archaic as the investigations carried out directly north and west have not brought to light the remains of more homes.
Private construction of Paestum old Republican you know very little, mainly because of the investigations conducted excavation in the area between 1930 and 1970 to a little careful reading and stratigraphic data which have never been published.
Eight residential blocks of Roman were brought to light, or almost entirely, in the western sector of the city, of which only a small area is property owned and partially excavated. They almost constant in size by about 35 meters wide by 273 meters in length, shape, therefore, very stretched, oriented north / south within these insulae housing is developed. The connections between one block and the other was secured by the main roads along the four sides of lots of houses and small streets or Ambitus (passes) that they crossed on the length.
The houses were of very different sizes, from a minimum of 380 m2 to a maximum of 2800 m2, and many of them over time is extended to the detriment of nearby homes. Larger buildings were closer to the political and religious center of the city.
Especially magnificent is the "Casa impluvium with marble," even if it is the smallest of its isolation, with an area of 650 m2. Articulated with the traditional sequence of entry (fauces), atrium-type without Tuscan columns, surrounded by cubicles (bedrooms), wing (indentation with the cabinets containing the maiorum imagines, pictures of ancestors) and tablinum (room representing the landlord, the dominus). Overcome these environments, you access a peristyle with the impluvium marble (Fig. 36), calling the house, and four brick columns set on a mosaic with figures of dolphins and swimmers. It presents the kind of structuring of a Roman house of the late Republican age.
In one of the blocks immediately west of the southern shrine, is one of the largest buildings of the imperial era, the so - "House with swimming pool, extended over an area of 2500 m2. The pool, which gives the name of the house, is at the center of a large courtyard with brick columns. It is, however, attributable to a first phase construction for housing, dating to the early Imperial; later, it was filled with earth and amphorae and replaced by a impluvium for collection of rainwater, now destroyed, undertaken together with portico.
Another domus, the "peristyle House", dating to the late imperial age, presents some functional to a small spa facility, with the traditional sequence of frigidarium (cold tub baths), tepidarium (for warm baths) and calidarium (hot baths). They are recognizable, also remains of praefurnium (heating), directly south of calidarium. These spaces building held that post until Late era, when the structure isolates was completely altered.