4 - House of the Swastika

The House of the Swastika earned this name during excavations carried out between 1939 and 1944, due to the use of this motif in the mosaics that covered some of the residence's spaces. The swastika was, for the Romans and the Lusitanians before them, a solar motif with magical connotations and usually interpreted as a symbol of good luck, far from the meanings attributed to it later. The building was na aristocratic house of considerable size, but without much architectural refinement, as it was built by adapting a previous building. Of particular note are the two large compartments on the side of the house opposite the wall, corresponding to a dining room, designated as a triclinium, which shows in its mosaic floor the U-shaped arrangement of the dining couches, and a large living room for the owners of the house, designated as a cubiculum. On the other side of the house, next to the wall, are three small compartments also decorated with mosaics, which may have been bedrooms. In this area of the house, traces of the first phase of its construction are also preserved, in which the foundation of the walls was not built from a foundation trench but rather consisted of the bedrock itself, cut to form the wall, a phenomenon typical of the oldest constructions in the city. The entire house was structured around the central peristyle, which contained a large water tank, inside which geometric coffers were built delimiting the garden. Built in the 1st century, the house was demolished to make way for the construction of the Late Roman Empire wall, at the end of the 3rd century or the beginning of the 4th century AD.