Emonan House

The Emonan House is part of the Archaeological Park Emona, which comprises ten locations across the city centre of Ljubljana.

In the southeastern corner of the former Roman city of Emona, on the so-called Jakopič Garden—named after the Slovenian Impressionist painter Rihard Jakopič, who had his studio nearby—visitors can view the remains of one of Emona’s residential buildings. The house was built in the 1st century AD and divided into several apartments arranged around a large central courtyard. The structure covered approximately 500 m² and was renovated three times, most recently in the 4th and 5th centuries.

The entrance was on the north side, leading into a corridor. Two doorways opened from the corridor into a room that housed the heating system, which also functioned as a kitchen and a simple latrine. The so-called winter room contains a preserved hypocaust heating system and connects to a smaller heated and paved room. The hypocaust system worked by heating hollow spaces beneath the floor, allowing warm air to rise through hollow clay bricks behind the plastered walls, thus warming both the floor and the walls.

On the other side of the corridor was the summer room, paved with a black-and-white mosaic typical of the 4th and 5th centuries.