The Romans were master builders and proved it with their well-built settlements. There were many different types of housing for Roman citizens. They ranged from simple apartments to extravagant country houses. The majority of Roman citizens lived in cramped, overcrowded tenements, also called insulae. Most wealthy patricians owned comfortable townhouses called domus and had the luxury of owning very lavish country homes, known as villas, to escape the busy city life. The accommodations of the two parties had very different and similar designs. Villas in Rome, as mentioned above, were residences for members of the upper class. There were three types of villas, the villa rustica, the villa urbana and the villa maritima. Villa Rustica was a self-sufficient agricultural estate on which many slaves worked. Slaves lived in or around the villa and tended the fields. They harvested produce from around the fields and took it into town to sell at the farmers' market. Later, the villas became a kind of vacation spot for wealthy citizens, these are the villas maritima and urbana. These houses were extravagant and very large. Usually they were decorated with beautiful mosaics and paintings, to show the wealth of the owner. Many emperors owned these magnificent mansions and one of the most famous seaside villas belonged to Emperor Tiberius. It's called Villa Jovis and it's located on the island of Capri. The interior of the villa was wonderfully open and bright. Entering from the street, guests were welcomed into an open room called an atrium. The atrium was a large, spacious room with a pool of water called an impluvium in the middle. The impluvium was directly under a rectangle... middle of paper... from the balcony, and long central rooms for entertaining guests. An insula housed thirty to fifty people and there were approximately 42,000 to 46,000 insula in Rome. Insulae had one or more rooms with a fire to prepare their meals and a balcony to get some fresh air. Many people living in Insula died due to fires, and since there was no emergency exit, people would jump from their rooms or desperately try to escape the building using the stairs. More often than not, the stairs collapsed. The people of Rome lived very differently, but they also had similarities because of the innovative Roman architects who designed their homes. We get modern apartments and mansions from the Roman insulae, villas and domus. Today, archaeologists are learning about how and where the Romans lived. We can improve thanks to Roman advances in housing.