taberna
Sign in to savethumb|upright=1.4|Diagram of a typical Roman domus, with a taberna on each side of the entrance
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- Origins and proliferation
- Formats
- Importance
- See also
- References
- External links
thumb|upright=1.4|Diagram of a typical Roman domus, with a taberna on each side of the entrance
A taberna (: tabernae) was a type of shop or stall in Ancient Rome. Originally meaning a single-room shop for the sale of goods and services, tabernae were often incorporated into domestic dwellings on the ground level flanking the fauces, the main entrance to a home, but with one side open to the street. As the Roman Empire became more prosperous, tabernae were established within great indoor markets and were often covered by a barrel vault. Each taberna within a market had a window above it to let light into a wooden attic for storage and had a wide doorway. A famous example of such an indoor market is the Markets of Trajan in Rome, built in the early 2nd century by Apollodorus of Damascus.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “taberna” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.