Dougga - Villas

On the paved road running east of Dougga are a number of villas, once sumptuously appointed, which are named after the mosaics found in them (now in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis). Built in the mid third century A.D., they were laid out on a plan commonly found in North Africa. A doorway in the windowless wall facing the street led into a vestibule, beyond which were the main rooms in the house, preceded by porticoes. In large houses the rooms looked out into a garden; in smaller ones they were built round an inner courtyard or patio (peristyle). In summer the cooler rooms in the basement were used, in winter the upper floors. This method of construction, found also in Bulla Regia, was particularly well suited to the sloping site of Dougga. The house known from its inscription as "Omnia tibi felicia" ("May all good fortune be yours"), with rooms laid out round a small peristyle, may have been the municipal brothel. Opposite it is the House of Dionysus and Odysseus, one of the best preserved villas in Dougga. Beyond this are the House of the Labyrinth and the House of the Three Masks. Farther south is the House of the Trifolium (so called from its clover-leaf plan), thought to have been the largest private house in the town, of which only the lower rooms survive.