This paper deals with public areas in ancient residences. These zones, emphasising the social status of the owners of the houses, are analysed in several large residences erected in the Graeco-Roman Period in Nea Paphos, Cyprus: the ‘Hellenistic’ House, the Villa of Theseus, and the House of Aion. Particularly, the special arrangement of the layout and the architectural decoration of three major public zones were studied: the entrance, the main courtyard, and the main room.

No abstract

The subject of this paper is a reconstruction of the architectural decoration of a façade of the House of Aion in Nea Paphos. During an excavation carried out in 1997 several pieces of decorated architectural elements were uncovered in room 19, among others the fragments of an arch, a lintel, an engaged column, an impost and two consoles. Those blocks served as a base for the reconstruction of the architectural frame of the main gateway. It took the form of a cantilevered, blind arcade of five spans erected above the main gate. Each span consisted of two engaged columns supporting an arch with a shallow niche underneath it, probably for a kind of decorative element. The reconstruction was based on similar architectural details known from the main room of the House of Aion, the Porta Aurea at the palace of Diocletian in Split, and the western façade of the Felix Romuliana Palace in Gamzigrad.

In 1964 the Venice Charter described anastylosis as the only acceptable method of reassembly of architectural remains. Although the scientific community has agreed with the Charter’s decision, many questions pertaining to the technical and aesthetic aspects of anastylosis remain unanswered. Virtual anastylosis seems one of the most promising digital solutions to finding at least some answers, as it permits testing various solutions before carrying out the actual physical re-erection of a damaged monument. Studying such variants with eye-trackers allows the participation of non-professional viewers at the very beginning of the process, that is at the design stage. By understanding how ordinary people look at different reconstructions, professionals and scholars can determine which elements would assist and which would hinder the instinctive assessment of the object’s value and history. This study compares perceptions of three variants of the same column. A total of 232 people were divided into three groups and asked to examine different types of anastyloses: with an empty cavity, with a cavity filled with a brighter stone, and with a cavity filled with a stone of the same color and texture as the rest of the column. Their perception of the columns was then analyzed using several parameters, including the number of fixations, the time spent looking at individual elements, and the chronological order in which the parts of the stimuli was taken in. This paper explores the benefits and the potential of this new research tool as well as offers a more detailed look at what a viewer-friendly model of anastylosis may be like.