01/02/2024
Our new starting point Aversa (Carinaro) Campania: Looking at the history of our new area and read that the houses of Carinaro were built in the style of the Roman domus houses (Roman style not Roman era). A house of two (or more) levels usually with one large entrance leading into a courtyard surrounded by other buildings or high walls. The lower floor usually kept for farm implements, livestock, slaves, workshop/shop. The second floor (day floor) with lofty ceilings and open plan, where rooms would have been created by wooden shutters, while the top floor would have lower ceilings built directly into the roof, which would only have a slight pitch to accommodate a reasonable headroom all around. Examples of the house can be seen at Pompeii or Herculaneum where even remnants of the wooden shutter walls can still be seen. Our new home has been built to this design, and although the plans show the house as open-plan, we do have rooms built with plasterboard and studding, the modern-day equivalent of wooden shutters.
We thought that our house was reasonably new, but it is extensive frontage renovations over the years that has given it the straight walls etc, so now believe the domus houses of our street to be at least 200 years old. A house at the beginning of the street is being renovated and at present the concrete render has been removed showing that the window was once a large arch that at some time in its life was bricked up, even this brickwork shows it to be of age, however as this house is in the part of the road which is in the Aversa district this could be of the Norman era. Aversa is known as the Norman town, with its football team nicknamed “the Normans.”