A Street in the Subura

The Subura was one of the busiest and poorest quarters of ancient Rome, filling the valley between the Esquiline, Viminal and Quirinal hills. Its streets ran up from the edge of the Forum, and the high stone wall behind the Forum of Augustus is often thought to have shielded that forum from the district's fires and crowds.

Most of its people lived in insulae, apartment blocks several stories high, with shops at street level and smaller, cheaper rooms the higher you climbed. Strabo says Augustus limited their height to 70 feet, and collapses and fires were a constant fear. The satirist Juvenal complained that no one in Rome could sleep for the carts in the streets at night, since wheeled traffic was largely banned by day. Martial wrote of the Subura's noise and its wet, muddy steps.

Bakeries like the one in the painting often ground their own grain on stone mills and baked in domed ovens; well-preserved examples survive at Pompeii. Street stalls and counters sold fruit, wine and hot food to people who often had no kitchen of their own.