page_title: Taberna
section_title: Origins and proliferation
hierarchical_section_title: Taberna / Origins and proliferation
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Roma, Mercati di Traiano, settore settentrionale della via Biberatica, lato dell'edificio del Piccolo emiciclo, tabernae (con stipiti e soglia in travertino originali)English: Rome, Trajan's Market, northern sector of the Via Biberatica, side of the building of the Piccolo Emiciciclo, tabernae (with original travertine jambs and threshold)
context_page_description: A taberna was a type of shop or stall in Ancient Rome. Originally meaning a single-room shop for the sale of goods and services, tabernae were often incorporated into domestic dwellings on the ground level flanking the fauces, the main entrance to a home, but with one side open to the street. As the Roman Empire became more prosperous, tabernae were established within great indoor markets and were often covered by a barrel vault. Each taberna within a market had a window above it to let light into a wooden attic for storage and had a wide doorway. A famous example of such an indoor market is the Markets of Trajan in Rome, built in the early 1st century by Apollodorus of Damascus.
  According to the Cambridge Ancient History, a taberna was a "retail unit" within the Roman Empire and was where many economic activities and many service industries were provided, including the sale of cooked food, wine, and bread.
  The plural form tabernae was also used to denote a way-station or hotel on roads between towns where genteel travellers needed to stay in something better than cauponae, and when the official mansio was not open to them.
context_section_description: Tabernae probably first appeared in ancient Greece, in locations that were important for economic activities around the end of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Upon the Roman Empire’s expansion into the Mediterranean, the numbers of tabernae greatly increased, in addition to the centrality of the taberna to the urban economy of Roman cities like Pompeii, Ostia, Corinth, Delos, New Carthage, and Narbo. Many of these cities were major port areas where imported luxury and exotic goods were sold to the public.  Tabernae functioned as the structural buildings that facilitated the sale of goods.
  Livy writes about an encounter that Marcus Furius Camillus, a Roman general present during the expansion of the Roman Republic in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, had with tabernae of Tusculum, a city in the Latium region of Italy:
  Camillus having pitched his camp before the gates, wishing to know whether the same appearance of peace as was displayed in the country prevailed also within the walls, entered the city, where he beheld the gates lying open, and everything exposed to sale in the open shops, and the workmen engaged each on their respective employments...
  The streets filled amid the different kinds of people.
caption: Tabernae along the side of Trajan's Market in Rome
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