Avenches – Roman Museum – Permanent Exhibition

Second Floor Protective Gods of the Household
It is difficult to estimate the number of people that would have lived in one
house. It can be assumed that there would have been at least three generations:
grandparents, parents and children, but also aunts and uncles, and, of course, all the
servants.
The Interior Decoration of a Room Situated on insula 10 East
Reconstruction of the “White Room” (1)
The walls inside most houses in Aventicum were decorated with either simple or rich
ornaments depending on the function of the rooms and the wealth of the owner.
These murals were found in a room heated by a hypocaust (floor heating). The backs
of the fragments still show traces of the heating system in the walls and the framework of
the vaulted ceiling.
Since limited space in the museum does not permit the reconstruction of the room in
its original height of 3.75 m, the bottom 1.6 m of the wall are not represented.
The floating couple Amor and Psyche are depicted above a window in the back
wall of the room. The long walls are decorated with female heads representing the four
seasons – here spring and summer – framing a still life consisting of pears and an apple,
which are attributes of the summer. Further still lifes were painted on the vaulted ceiling:
a lemon on the left, a pomegranate and figs on the right, and between them a woman
holding a torch, placed in the centre of a veil draped over a bed of roses.
The style, the artistic technique and the archaeological context date this room, which
was part of a house owned by a wealthy person, to the first third of the 3rd century AD.
Model of the Murals in the “White Room”
The model illustrates how fresco wall paintings were made in a workshop of the
3 rd century AD: A worker is covering the wall with the first layers of mortar, a painter is
applying the colours while the master is discussing the design. The painting is applied on
the topmost and finest layer of mortar, while it is still wet.
This room would have been heated by a hypocaust, a system heating the floor and
the walls. The hot air emanating from a furnace (praefurnium) circulated between two
layers of tile flooring. The lower layer rested on pillars (pilae) between 50 and 70 cm in
height and set at original intervals. The hot air could also move up through the walls in
vertical flue tiles (tubuli) fitted into the walls.
Scale 1:10.
Protective Gods of the Household
The six bronze statuettes (2) belong to a small domestic altar (lararium) from
insula 27. Such altars were usually placed either in the atrium (inner courtyard), in
the peristyle garden or sometimes in the kitchen.
These statuettes of Roman deities represent (from top to bottom and left to right)
Fortuna, Minerva, Juno, another Minerva, Mercury and Lar to ensure the protection
of the family members during their daily routine. This group was assembled
between the 1 st and 2 nd centuries AD.
1
2
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Second Floor