Product Description

In Houses, Villas, and Palaces in the Roman World, Alexander G. McKay examines simple houses, mansions, estates, and palatial buildings, and he pays particular attention to accounts of ancient writers that deal with such topics as house design, interiors, furnishings, and gardens. Describing innovative high-rise apartments, her compact civic squares, large public buildings, temples, shopping centers, and commercial areas, he shows that Roman civilization was astonishingly similar to our own. He also discusses the conditions of life in the Roman provinces, where recent discoveries have shed fresh light on private and communal living. McKay has enhanced the text by the inclusion of over 150 illustrations of plans, sites, and reconstructions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #487996 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review

""A well-documented, scholarly book on a subject of great interest -- a resume of the domestic architecture of all periods and levels of the Roman world." -- Times Literary Supplement

""Striking a judicious balance between the archaeological and the literary evidence, McKay has compressed a surprising amount of material into a limited space... [This] volume is eminently useful both to the scholar and to the beginning student." -- Vergilius

About the Author

Alexander G. McKay is professor emeritus of classics at McMaster University.

Customer Reviews

A Most Cruel and Inhuman Book!
This book has given me the incredible desire to take the rest of my life and do nothing except tour the archeological sites of classical Etruscan and Imperial Roman towns and cities! Alexander McKay- You are very cruel.

For many years I have seen pictures in books and online of fragments and ruins of buildings, which can be interesting but seeing the pictures in the context of a complete floor plan brings a sudden epiphany of how our forebearers lived. I spent 7 hours surfing on the net looking at the pictures online for a number of the palaces and houses included in this book and dreaming of an itinerary covering almost all of western Europe,northern Africa and great areas of the near and mid East. Now I need to go out and win a very large lottery to afford it.