The peristyle of House H1 in the ancient town at Marina el-Alamein

Abstract

A thorough study of the architectural elements found in the ruins of House H1 in the northern part of the ancient town at the site of Marina el-Alamein led to a reconstruction of a two-storeyed portico around the inner courtyard. The upper storey of the peristyle would have accommodated the galleries from which one could enter the rooms on the first floor. The author, an architectural historian, presents the architecture and proportions of two-storeyed peristyle porticoes as they would have been implemented at this seaside town in the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, just 100 km west of Alexandria, and uses this example to review the known parallels from other regions, including the “Palazzo delle Colonne” in Ptolemais and the Meroitic Palace of Natakamani in Gebel Barkal, Sudan. He concludes that both the general layout of the house at Marina el-Alamein and the two-storeyed peristyle architectural design were hardly unique in the Hellenistic and Roman world of North Africa, but what made the Marina house different was the stateliness of its appearance.