ROMAN TABERNA
A taberna (plural tabernae) was a single room shop covered by a barrel vault within great indoor markets of ancient Rome. Each taberna had a window above it to let light into a wooden attic for storage and had a wide doorway. A famous example is the Markets of Trajan in Rome, built in the early 1st century by Apollodorus of Damascus.
There were mainly two forms of tabernae within the Roman empire, those found in domestic and public settings. Domestic houses had shops fronting their premises. Tabernae were also established in residential multi-storey apartment blocks called insulae, which were heavily occupied by freedmen.[1] As the development of urban centers in Roman cities increased, the Roman elite continued to develop residential and commercial buildings to accommodate the large masses of people coming in and out of these market centers. Insulae were constructed, with tabernae located on the lower levels of them. The class of people who ran the tabernae are called tabernari, who were mainly urban freedmen who worked under a patron who owned the actual property.
The second form of tabernae were similar to domestic tabernae found in insulae because they were in a fixed location within a complex of buildings, however they were instead located within public markets and forums, areas that received high amounts of traffic.
Congratulations to Dawes Scorpio for a FTF, to Airhorns for another 2TF and to Citizen Smith for a Bronze medal