The House of the Vestals was the residence of Rome’s most important priesthood, and the only permanent residence in the Roman Forum. It was home to Rome’s six Vestal Virgins, priestesses entrusted with keeping the sacred hearth fire burning in the Temple of Vesta. Their task was of the utmost importance: for the Romans believed that if the fire was extinguished, this would spell disaster for the survival of the Roman state.
Who Were the Vestal Virgins?
The Vestal Virgins were Rome’s most revered and distinctive priestesses. They were recruited from patrician families by Rome’s head priest, the Pontifex Maximus, when they were between the ages of six and ten, and served a 30-year tenure marked by strict chastity, immense religious responsibility, and significant social privileges.
They served the goddess Vesta, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Hestia, who was the daughter of Kronos (Saturn) and the virgin goddess of the hearth and home. The Greeks honoured Hestia with ever-burning fires in their temples and city centres. Arguably, the Catholic Church still kindles the embers of this pagan tradition by not allowing the sanctuary lamp before the tabernacle to ever go out. But in Rome, the focal point was singular, and situated within the Temple of Vesta.
What Did the Vestal Virgins Do?
The work of the Vestal Virgins was mysterious and important.
They safeguarded several iconic objects of historical and mythological importance to Rome. One of these was the Palladium, a statue of Athena supposedly brought to Rome by the Trojan prince Aeneas, who also brought with him the Vestal flame. Another, as Pliny the Elder tells us, was the Fascinus: the “divine dick” — a large (and presumably wooden) phallus:
“Infants are under the especial guardianship of the god Fascinus, the protector, not of infants only, but of generals as well, and a divinity whose worship is entrusted to the Vestal Virgins, and forms part of the Roman rites. It is the image of this divinity that is attached beneath the triumphant car of the victorious general, protecting him, like some attendant physician, against the effects of envy.”
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 28.4.7
The primary duty of the Vestal Virgins, however, was tending the sacred flame of Vesta in the goddess’s adjoining temple. And should that flame go out, the Vestals faced dire consequences.
“Keep On Burning”
Allowing the flame of the temple to be extinguished spelt negligence on the part of the Vestals and, according to Roman superstition, disaster for the Roman state. The punishment for this was flogging, unless the Vestal responsible could perform some miracle to reignite the flame, as Aemilia and Tuccia once did by throwing a cloth onto dying embers.
Far graver than letting the fire go out would be if one of the Vestals were no longer a virgin. Any Vestal caught having sexual relations with a man was to be walled up alive, while her co-culprit was condemned to being flogged to death by a slave.
To soften the grim prospect of meeting such a dreadful fate, the Romans sweetened the deal with a host of special privileges. First and foremost, a Vestal was freed from patria potestas — that is, the legal control of her father, something all other unmarried Roman women endured. Admittedly, the paternal role was instead taken up by the Pontifex Maximus, but there were some other perks. A Vestal could ride around the city in a carpentum (carriage). She had seats reserved for her at the public games. In the case of the Colosseum, the Vestal Virgins got to sit close to the action on the lower seating strata, while other women were made to watch the games from wooden seating at the top. Vestal Virgins even enjoyed special burial rights (outside a walled cave if she was lucky).
👇 Learn more about the Colosseum by listening to my History Hit podcast
The Prestige of the Vestals & the Curious Case of Caligula
To grasp just how prestigious the Vestal Virgins were in ancient Rome, we only need to glance at the peculiar reign of Caligula. Infamous for engaging in incest with his sisters and elevating them to previously unimagined status, Caligula ensured that oaths of allegiance sworn throughout the empire explicitly included the phrase “and his sisters.”
Coins from his reign proudly announce them as sorores Augustae — the “Augustan Sisters” — and he even conferred upon his sisters and grandmother Antonia the privileges reserved exclusively for honorary Vestal Virgins. Most shockingly of all, Caligula went so far as to name his favourite sister, Drusilla, as his heir apparent — a move that would’ve stunned his contemporaries. (Keep in mind, Rome’s nascent monarchy was barely out of its cradle, and Caligula may well have drawn inspiration from foreign rulers like Egypt’s Cleopatra in shaping his own autocratic vision.)
👇 Listen to my podcast about Caligula’s sex life and “incest” claims
Coins, often far more reliable than the scandal-mongering scribbles of the likes of Suetonius, paint a picture not of sordid scandal but of public pride and propaganda. Under Caligula, coins gave us our first-ever instance of a female portrait appearing on both sides of a coin (honouring his mother, Agrippina the Elder), and provided the earliest examples of living imperial women, his sisters, being portrayed and explicitly identified by name.
Moreover, the goddess Vesta — embodying security, purity, and stability — figured prominently on coinage issued by Caligula. The message couldn’t be clearer. By invoking Vesta’s divine securitas, Caligula was positioning his imperial family as Rome’s safeguard against chaos.
For a kinder, perhaps psychoanalytical interpretation of Caligula’s intense bond with his sisters, consider this: he was deeply traumatised from a childhood rife with betrayal and death, desperately lonely, and determined at all costs to hold surviving family members close—not merely for political show, but genuinely for mutual emotional security.
Strangely enough, a Vestal Virgin also had the power to save life. For if a Vestal encountered a condemned man on the day of his execution, it was decreed that she had the power to pardon him.
The House of the Vestal Virgins in the Roman Forum
The House of the Vestal Virgins was not excavated until the 1880s. Before this, the Vestals’ residence, like many other ancient remains, had been buried beneath built-up layers of earth known as Campo Vaccino.
Together with the Temple of Vesta, it formed a complex known as the Atrium Vestae, which closely resembled the Regia (Royal House), first the residence of Rome’s Etruscan kings and later the house of the Pontifex Maximus. When Augustus became Pontifex Maximus in 12 BCE, he took up residence on the Palatine Hill and left the Regia for the Vestals.
The Regia was briefly incorporated into the Atrium Vestae before the entire complex was devastated by the Great Fire of 64 that raged during the reign of Nero. Rebuilt under the emperor Domitian, the House underwent further restorations during the reigns of Trajan and Septimius Severus. But after Theodosius outlawed pagan cults in 391 CE, the time of the Vestals was limited. Before the century was out, the House of the Vestals had become a residence of city and papal officials.
What remains of the House of the Vestals
What remains today is mostly a central garden court surrounded by colonnades and statues on pedestals. These statues date from the second to third centuries, not long after the House of the Vestals took on its final architectural form in 113 CE. Today, the House of the Vestals gives the impression of a cross between a modest nunnery courtyard and an ornate English manor garden. But on either side of the two-storeyed colonnades were luxurious individual residences, complete with bathing suites, underfloor heating, and a host of slaves and servants to cater for the Vestal’s every need.
As visitors today can still see, the House of the Vestals formed part of a unified complex with the Temple of Vesta and the Regia. After all, it made sense that those whose job it was to keep the sacred hearth burning didn’t live too far away from work. Because of its proximity to the Regia, the original hearth had probably been that of the king. The Regia’s incorporation into the complex, however, resulted in its transformation to become Rome’s communal hearth.
Today’s entrance to the House of the Vestals lies to the east of the temple. It was a three-storey structure comprising 50 rooms — the others were presumably for the complex’s service staff. At the east of the complex was an open vault in which stood a statue of Numa Pompilius, the founder of the cult. The statues that line its current courtyard are all originals discovered on site, as are the pedestals upon which they stand. However, because they were discovered in a pile, nobody knows whether they correspond to the correct original order.
The rooms on the southern side of the atrium are the best preserved of the complex. Archaeologists have identified amongst its rooms a bakery, a mill (with a grindstone) and what appears to be a kitchen. You can also make out the part of a stairway that presumably led to the Vestals’ private quarters. The parts of the atrium built in Cappellaccio are the ones that date from the Archaic Period.
Want to visit the Roman Forum, the House of the Vestals and the Colosseum?
Book a skip-the-line Colosseum Arena Tour through Carpe Diem Tours and get a 15% discount using the promo code ALEX15 at checkout.
