13 - House of the Apsidal Medianum

Integrated into a plot of land acquired about a century ago by the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, with the intention of carrying out archaeological excavations there, the house of the apsidal medianum was the first building to be almost entirely excavated in Conímbriga (1928). The house owes its name to the tank in the form of a double apse located in the inner courtyard, with the function of collecting rainwater that fell from the roofs converging on it. The existence of this opening also had the function of providing light to the dwellings that opened onto balconies or verandas. The building had a central residential core, which was distributed over an undetermined number of floors and an independent area, composed of several shops that opened onto a street perpendicular to the forum. The insula where this house is located includes other residences, all of which have undergone successive transformations over time. In one of them, a domestic altar dedicated to a Roman god of fertility, Liber Pater, was found, dedicated by an individual who may have been a freedman of one of the city's leading families: his name was Valerius Daphnus. The first name indicates his family of origin, the Greek cognomen, his former status as a slave. The definitive abandonment of this sector seems to have occurred in the Middle Ages.