Shops and bars
The shops of Ostia were studied for the first time by Giancarla Girri: La taberna nel quadro urbanistico e sociale di Ostia, Roma 1956. More recently they were studied in depth by Julien Schoevaert: Les boutiques d'Ostie. L'économie urbaine au quotidien. Ier s. av. J.-C. - Ve s. ap. J.-C., Rome 2018. For Pompeii we have Verena Gassner, Die Kaufläden in Pompeii, Wien 1986, for Rome Claire Holleran, Shopping in Ancient Rome. The Retail Trade in the Late Republic and the Principate, Oxford 2012.
In the excavated part of Ostia (about two-thirds of the city) 806 shops were counted by Girri, 1263 by Schoevaert. In Pompeii 577 shops had been found by 1986. It should be remembered that the Ostian shops were also visited by sailors and merchants.
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Click on the image to enlarge. Schoevaert 2018, Pl. I. Plan of Ostia with the shops identified by Girri (colour) and additional shops according to Schoevaert (white). |
Shops (tabernae) consist of rooms that are almost always large and rectangular. Most were accessible from the street, some from the interior of a building, from a courtyard or corridor. The former are often behind a portico, especially along the city's main streets. In the facade may be a terracotta shop-sign. The entrances to the shops are wide, with a characteristic threshold and lintel, having a groove for vertical shutters and a depression with a pivot-hole for a door. See the images below. At night shops were closed by inserting a number of wooden shutters in a long groove (B) in the threshold. Next to this groove was a depression with a pivot-hole for a door (A). The shutters were first inserted in this depression and then slid sideways. The doors are always to the right, seen from the street. As a result, bar counters are always on the left, in order not to block the door.
 
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| Reconstruction drawing: A. Pascolini, Usanze e techniche nell'edilizia degli antichi Romani, Roma 1985, 66-67. |
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A shop threshold seen from the interior of the shop. Photo: Klaus Heese.
Sometimes a light partition-wall was used to set apart a living room, a working area, or a storage area. Annexes on the ground floor must have been used for these purposes as well. Many shops have a mezzanine (pergula). This is a floor above the shop, usually at a height of three-and-a-half to four metres, accessible along a wooden ladder resting on a brick or travertine podium with a few treads, usually in a corner of the shop. The pergula received light through a window above the entrance to the shop. It was most likely used as dwelling.
Unfortunately there are not many clues amongst the ruins to tell us what was sold in which shop (in itself not difficult to imagine by using Inscriptions, literary sources and reliefs). Obviously bread was sold in shops in the facade of bakeries. On three locations fish shops can be identified. Water basins have been found in several shops, but these could be used for all sorts of purposes. For Pompeii, the issue is dealt with only briefly by Gassner. For Rome, Holleran has noted some clustering in wards (vici) of the production and/or sale of commodities, for example of glass in the Vicus Vitrarius, and of unguents and perfumes in the Vicus Unguentarius. Clustering made sense if goods were bought infrequently, for example clothes and crockery. The customers could then easily locate the shops, and compare quality and prices. The craftsmen could specialize. Related products would presumably also tend to cluster, such as oil lamps and oil.
Most bars are simply shops in which food and drink were served. Their main characteristic today is the bar counter, often placed in the main entrance. Two styles exist: some counters are placed with their backs against the wall, with a water basin built into the base and stepped shelves on top. To modern people they look like a fireplace. Most counters are of the second style, the free standing counter, which is a counter in the real sense, with a vaulted water basin in its base that is accessible from both sides of the counter. The water in the basin was mixed with wine and used for cleaning crockery.
Without doubt many bar counters, some of wood, have collapsed and disappeared during the later stages of Ostia's existence. Thirty-nine bars can still be identified. They were studied in detail by Gustav Hermansen.
A bar counter in the House of the Wine Bar (I,II,5): a combination of a counter with a basin and stepped shelves. Photo: Klaus Heese.
[JThB - 27-Sep-2024]