A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Impluviums

Several years ago I had bought this popular history of a Roman day by Alberto Angela, the host of an Italian TV science series, when I was at the Oxnard Costco (surprisingly).  I decided to reread it for the trip to Rome so I picked it up at the library and I'm discovering all sorts of things that I had forgotten or perhaps had never absorbed.

For instance, at 6:00 am we visit the domus or house of a wealthy Roman and describes the impluvium in the atrium.  The impluvium is a pool of water below a large opening to the sky in the middle of the house (like a small courtyard) that allows the rainwater (and sunlight) in.  The roof around it is sloped down towards the opening so that even more rainwater is collected and the excess is stored underground in cisterns.  Because A Day in the Life... is not well illustrated, I googled impluvium and came up with a lot of images, some of the most interesting were "lavoirs" or laundries in France, as illustrated on the left, where you can see how the roof slopes down.  There are some nice illustrations of this system on the web, including one Roman villa near Barcelona Torre LLauder, where we learn that the opening in the roof is called a compluvium.  There are lots of illustrations of this system on the web, which would be a neat one to have in California, although I haven't run across any signs that they are interested.