The Forum at Pompeii

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Key: Numbering System for "Rooms," Walls, and Doors

The accompanying plan provides the numbering system employed for all rooms and spaces in region VII, insula 9. The conventional system of numbers for region, insula, and door does not designate spaces within or between buildings. The system adopted here retains the region and insula number, but replaces the door number with a number for every space within the insula. Numbering begins at the northwestern corner of the insula and proceeds left to right within individual buildings, to the extent that their boundaries can be identified. Thus each space has a tripartite number whose first two elements are those of the conventional system. For example, the shrine within the Macellum is VII.9.37. As all of the spaces under discussion belong to region VII, insula 9, only the third element in the numbering system is employed here.

A shorthand system of designating walls uses the letter W and the numbered space on each side of the wall in question. The first number indicates the side of the wall being discussed, when that is an issue. For example, among the north shops of the Macellum, W7.8 refers to the wall between shop 7 and entrance 8 with particular attention to the side within shop 7. When seen from the opposite side, the same wall is W8.7. Similarly, D refers to a door; d would refer to a blocked door. Thus D112.115 is the door between 112 and 115 in the Sanctuary of the Genius of Augustus. Streets are designated as "via" followed by the numbers of the blocks that define the street. Thus W18.viaVII- 4/VII-9 indicates the wall between space 18 and the street that runs between VII.4 and VII.9.

(If the plan that accompanies this key is not sufficiently clear, it would be possible to add numbered plans of the individual buildings. Please advise. See Comments for my e-mail address.)

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