Maintaining an atrium house during the Principate in Ostia.

The Italian atrium houses are well-known from literary sources and Pompeii excavations. This
form was typical of the late Republic and early Empire, but some of them were maintained over many centuries.
Ostia is a good case study to investigate such maintenance during the mid-imperial period. Most of the atrium
houses built at the mouth of the Tiber were broken down by that time, because the insulae became the common
type of dwelling. However, a few householders preferred to preserve their old domus rather than construct new,
more profitable dwellings. This paper discusses the case of two Augustan houses in the imperial urban fabric
of Ostia, with a focus on the Domus a Peristilio (IV, V, 16). In fact, recent excavations highlighted many repairs
and transformations that took place between the first century AD and the beginning of the third century AD.