Notes on the Biography of Doors. Ianualogy in Casa del Menandro, Pompeii
Notes on the Biography of Doors. Ianualogy in Casa del Menandro, Pompeii

Summary/Abstract: In the present article, I probe into the biography of doors from an ancient Campanian large urban house, seen against the background of its neighborhood. More specifically, I selected as a case study the so-called Casa del Menandro (Pompeii I, 10, 4). I will attempt to recast doors as part of Roman architectural language pattern, engineered as an osmosis device servicing both the world inside and the world outside. What I termed “ianualogy analysis” will emphasize the role of doors and doorways in the visual articulation of space, the negotiation of privacy, and as ontological carriers of past. I take my cue from Christopher Alexander’s classical adages that, when deciding the position of doors and windows, “it is possible to relax regularity without losing structural integrity” and that going – and, I would add, even taking a look – through the door is “a deliberate, thoughtful passage from one place to another.”

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