Booking Your Travel in the Ancient World: A Beginner's Guide to Roman Hotels

Finally! AirBnBs with guaranteed boarding for both you and your trusty steed.

Jun 21, 2024

photo of the appian way outside of rome with ancient roman road — **Figure 1.** The grand-daddy of Roman roads. *Via Appia Antica - the Appian Way, Ancient Road - Rome 2016*. Photograph by Erik Törner, February 26, 2017. Flickr.

The Roman world at its height stretched from Northumberland to Syria, a distance of more than 2,500 miles.

Then, as today, people traveled for business and pleasure. Whether you were a vintner from Gaul (modern France), or an olive oil merchant from southern Iberia (Spain) — the markets for your goods might be located very far from where you lived. If I wanted to see gladiatorial games at Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre (a.k.a. the Colosseum), I’d need to travel 150 miles from my imaginary country estate in Etruria (Tuscany).

And if you couldn’t sail— usually the cheapest, fastest, and safest option for long distance travel — you had to go overland. Luckily the Romans built and maintained more than 250,000 miles of roads — 50,000 of them paved — to take even land-lubbers to where they were going.1 And it was across these ancient highways that masses of goods, animals, and people circulated throughout the empire.

So, where did people stay overnight?

Booking Ahead

You don’t have to look far to find references to lodging in the Roman world. Take the New Testament for instance (yep, we’re going there). There’s a reference to “inns” being full on the night of the birth of Jesus. Translated from the original Greek, katalyma (κατάλυμα), does mean “inn,” but it doesn’t quite fit our modern conception. It actually refers to a shared room in a private home, a guest house, or hostel — all of which were common in the Greek east.2

**Fig 2.** Jupiter & Mercury (Hermes) testing the hospitality of locals — these two passed the test. Their neighbors bolted their doors and the gods responded by destroying their entire village. Proportional response. *Jupiter and Mercurius in the House of Philemon and Baucis*, from the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, 17th century. Wikimedia Commons

In any event, this tracks; Roman Judea has been in the Hellenistic sphere since at least the days of Alexander the Great, and informal lodging was more common in this part of the Mediterranean.

Were all the “inns” really full though? Or were their options just that sketchy? Maybe the editors of the Bible wanted to spare the locals some embarrassment.

Down the Pub

If you were hunting for something a bit less off the beaten path, Tabernae were Roman equivalents to taverns.3 Rooms would be commonly be offered here, located on the second floor above the bar. These spots provided inexpensive food and drink, entertainment, and sometimes stables for horses.

Asellina’s Thermopolium, literally “hot shop,” is one of the best preserved examples of a Roman tavern in existence. This one-room wine bar would have served hot meals and bar snacks like dried fruit, olives, nuts, and roasted chickpeas; Patrons could stand at the bar, share a table in the communal area, and gamble late into the night. Archaeologists found a trove of artifacts here, including a phallic-shaped lamp that would have illuminated the counter.4 Necessary decoration in order to keep that evil eye away!

Some have suggested Asellina’s, like other popinae, might have doubled as a brothel, though no conclusive evidence points to this — despite the lamp.5

**Fig. 3:** This comic strip found in Pompeii’s Bar of Salvius illustrates two dice players getting into a fight over cheating, with the second panel showing the barkeep pushing them both out the door. Source: Wikimedia Commons, "Tavern scene from VI 14, 36 (Caupona of Salvius) by Geremia Discanno, published 1882,"

Chances are, these weren’t the quietest of locations to get a good night’s rest. The bars got rowdy, not unlike our pubs. Some writers derided them for being venues frequented by the lower classes. The poet Horace described taverns in the 1st century BCE as “greasy.”6 Only the best dive bars are, right?

Classier joints could be found, too. One taberna owned by the Pompeii property mogul Julia Fenix (yes, a woman) provided the option to hire a formal dining room with sofas for business luncheons or private parties. Julia Fenix also rented out ritzy apartments at her estate in the city, which offered private baths onsite.7 No surprise for Pompeii — there were plenty of places to wine and dine friends or clients after taking them to watch a brawl at the hometown amphitheater.

**Fig. 4:** *Interior decoration of the Thermopolium of Lucius Vetutius Placidus at Pompeii*, by Sean Hardies, June 18, 2013. The central figure represents the genus of the house (the family name), flanked by the Lares and Penates (household gods). Mercury stands to the far left and Bacchus on the far right.

Will They Leave the Light on For You?

If taverns and guest houses weren’t enough to stoke your wanderlust, there were a few other options referred to in Roman sources.

Hospitia, like their Greek counterparts in the east, would have started as informal lodging or guest houses, but eventually became year-round commercial hotels. They would have been purpose-built facilities.8

There were also caupona. Think small, cheap, and seedy — with little more on offer than a bug-infested mattress and blanket on the floor of a shared room. Not exactly the Ritz-Carlton.

An appealing option for business travelers might have been stabula, which was a motel or coaching inn, and often found at the entrances to cities. These would have had an open courtyard, latrines, facilities for stabling animals, and a ramp sloping onto the streets to allow access to pack animals and carts.

Roman TSAs

It could take weeks for traders from Italy to reach Londinium (London) or Lutetia Parisiorum (Paris).

Handily, engineers installed stone posts to mark every Roman mile (roughly 5,000 feet) along major highways to let travelers know where they were. On top of that, there were relay stations constructed every 20 miles, known as mansiones. You can almost think of these as ancient highway rest stops. Here you could take shelter from the weather, feed & water your horses, change mounts, or pass a message along to another rider. The example below, near Chester in England, even had its own bath house. Who said you couldn’t enjoy the comforts of the big city, so far from home?

**Fig 5.** Artists impression of a Roman *mansio* and bath house in Chester (Frank Gardiner).

Originally a mansio would have been barracks for traveling soldiers or government officials, since Roman army engineers often built these roads to begin with.9 Initially, people using the stations were traveling on government business. But commercial guest houses sprang up around them, with places to eat and drink. Not unlike Roman garrisons, mansiones were probably prime spots for the locals to hawk their goods.

We know this from places like the Roman fort at Vindolanda in Northern England, just south of Hadrian’s Wall, where communities grew up around the Roman station to take advantage of trading opportunities.10

Cursus Publicus

If these kinds of services were offered across thousands of miles of roadway — who was managing it all? And how was it being paid for?

Enter the Cursus Publicus, meaning “the public way.” This was the courier and transportation service operated by the Roman state. The Emperor Augustus established it as an official network, replacing private couriers used during the Republic. Modeled on the Persian system, it was available to individuals traveling on official state or army business. It also helped maintain the relay stations mentioned above. It was mainly run by contractors, but paid for by the state, through your tax dollars!

**Fig 6**. Small section of the Tabula Peutingeriana (a medieval reproduction) said to have been modeled on a 4th century map of the *Cursus Publicus.* Top to bottom: Dalmatian coast, Adriatic Sea, southern Italy, Sicily, African Mediterranean coast. *Note: May be Carolingian (Frankish) in origin as opposed to Roman — doesn’t diminish the cool factor IMO.*

The above map, a tiny section of the Peutinger Table (Tabula Peutingeriana), is said to have been based on a 4th century original, and produced the 12th century. It looks funky, but it’s not meant to be realistic in scale — think of it more like an ancient public transit map, showing the various lines and major stops along the way. You can check out the full map of the network here. The actual map is 22 feet in length, and is nothing short of spectacular. It gives you a real sense of just how well-connected this world really was.

There seem to be plenty of writers (mostly rich Senators, I mentioned Horace earlier) complaining about how bad the hotels were in the ancient world. They preferred to stay with friends. That might be anyone’s preference today, but most citizens didn’t have that luxury. It does make me wonder just how much of their attitude was down to snobbery rather than reality.

In future posts, I’ll be writing more about the courier system and about Rome’s incredible road networks. Stay tuned for more!