©MarinaDeFranceschini - Progetto Accademia
29 - HUNDRED CHAMBERS
Description
To create the large square of the Poecile it was necessary to build enormous substructures, which in some points are more than 15 meters high.
A first section (a) extends under the west and south sides of the Poecile. Tower (b) marks the point where the substructures make an angle and continue for a long stretch (c) until they reach the Vestibule (n. 49).
They support another large panoramic terrace that goes from the Building with Three Exedras to the Vestibule, from which the view extends over the surrounding countryside, and also the main entrance to the Villa is seen, the Paved Roadway (47).
Another paved and smaller road (d) goes along the Hundred Chambers; it ends on a side of the Vestibule, entering a tunnel leading to the subterranean service corridors. A wall separated it from the Paved Roadway, so they were two different routes (n. 47).
Aerial view of the Hundred Chambers
The Hundred Chambers are built like the Praetorium Substructures(n. 39): they had a back wall towards the embankment and a series of walls arranged at right angles, which served as buttresses.
The high and narrow spaces between the buttresses were divided into several floors by wooden mezzanines, which rested on travertine blocks still in place. Access to these rooms was from the outside, with wooden stairs and balconies, in order not to weaken the walls of the buttresses by perforating them with doors.
The rooms were plastered and the back wall towards the embankment is double, so as to create a cavity that protected them from humidity. The floors were in opus spicatum with rectangular bricks; there are multiple latrines.
The Hundred Chambers and their road
Function and meaning
The name refers to the innumerable windows of the rooms created in the substructures, which housed the hundreds of slaves, servants and soldiers of the Villa.
The servile destination is proved by the modesty of the decoration, by the presence of multiple latrines and by the paved road: it led to the subterranean service corridors that reached the furnaces of the Large Baths and the Small Baths.
Marina De Franceschini, Villa Adriana. Mosaici, pavimenti, edifici. Roma 1991, pp. 202-204 and 492-497.
Hulsen 1896; Coarelli 1997.