Casa Rupestre - Segesta

The casa Rupestre is a typical house from the 6th century BC.

This restored house is a good example of the rock house type: it consists of two large rooms separated by a partition (also cut into the rock), in which the walls and floor are made of carefully crafted stone. A silo for food storage is still visible in the front room, while a cistern in the rear has been covered by a later transformation of the house; some holes in the rock floor indicate the presence of wooden poles for the roof .

After a poorly documented habitation in the 2nd century BC. a radical transformation took place in the Augustan period : another small room was created in the back room and an oven and two altars for domestic worship were added to the back wall; the walls were plastered and the rock was paved with cocciopesto. The house must have looked stately, judging by the stucco cornices found and the care taken in the furnishings; the presence of a second floor (Phase II) cannot be excluded.

A fire caused it to be abandoned in the 1st century AD and turned into a rubbish dump . Finally, in the Swabian period (late 12th-13th centuries), the passage between the two rooms was closed and the antechamber was reoccupied by a core of single-family houses, each with a hearth (Phase III).

Willem Vandenameele