Author:Fullonica defined
Francis Brenders
What exactly is a fullonica? We often translate it as ‘laundry’ or ‘cleaners’ but this is somewhat simplistic. In fact, Roman fullonicae (that’s the plural) provided a variety of services. Ancient fullonicae treated newly-made garments in addition to dirty clothes. They specialized in the treatment of wool. The first operation was cleaning. This was done in the so-called stalls, which were large basins where the garments were immersed in a mixture of urine and “fullers clay” which we use today as cat litter. Old urine mixed with this clay dissolved grease and removed dirt. In our imagination we see workers spending days trampling cloth knee-deep in urine, but this is a false idea. In fact the mixture used was rather thick and the garments were hardly soaked.

Trampling stalls, Fullonica Stephani, Pompeii [Photo: Dave and Margie Hill | Some rights reserved]

One of the large basins in the south-east of the Fullonica V,VII,3 seen from the Via della Fullonica
[Photo: OAPP | Some rights reserved]
Ostia vs Pompeii
With all this in mind it’s interesting to compare the number of stalls of the fullonicae at Pompeii to those of Ostia. The excavated area of both cities is almost equal: 86 ha (Pompeii) against 85 ha (Ostia). But at Ostia it becomes immediately apparent that a great part of the town is occupied by warehouses, bath buildings, markets and guild-houses.When we compare the two cities it is immediately obvious that there are more private housing facilities in Pompeii, while Ostia boasted large apartment complexes with multiple floors. The population of both cities might have been almost equal. Yet it seems a given that there was a higher number of workmen in Ostia than in Pompeii. These working people had no need of the formal clothing that was cleaned and prepared in the fullonica. It seems fair to assume that in Roman times people of the upper classes in both cities had the same needs to clean and adjust their clothes, and that this number was simply higher in Pompeii than in Ostia.

Pompeii, Fullonica Stephani (1.6.7). Rinsing basin. [Photo: Rafael-Jiménez | Some rights reserved]
The installations are in the far back of the house while the street front was clearly the shop. The intermediary part is a luxurious dwelling with a tablinum and triclinium with highly decorated walls. Another fullonica is installed in a typical courtyard house (VI,8,20-21). This is one of the wealthier houses of Regio VI with a colonnaded impluvium and a garden. Only at the far end of the garden, one side of the peristylium is separated for the installation of a fullonica. This fullonica is strictly separated from the rest of the house, so it is clear that both facilities existed together. The rather small number of stalls in Pompeii is remarkable since in Roman times Pompeii was known as a centre of wool and cloth industry.

Ostia Fullonica in Via degli Augustali (V,XII,3). Axonometric reconstruction, Pietrogrande 1976, fig, 20.
It isn’t clear where the drying took place in the industrial fullonicae. Only one of them (II,XI,2) has an open space linked to the workshop. In the other two (III,II,2 and V,VII,3) there is no place left for operations other than soaping and rinsing. Despite these striking differences in scale, Meiggs (Roman Ostia, p. 312) remarked that the guild of the Ostian fullers had only a minor importance, because in 232 A.D. this guild boasted fewer than 50 members. This raises some questions. First of all, the decline of Ostia started in the third century. What did these guilds represent in this context? Secondly, who were the members of the guilds? Was it only the patrons of the workshops and their associates, or could workmen also be members of the guild?
Ostia’s undocumented import?
What conclusion can we draw from these observations? We know Ostia principally as the port of entry for grain. To date, there is no record of textile trading. Nevertheless there was a massive fulling activity that was only eclipsed by the fullonica of Casal Bertoni at Rome, which had 97 stalls in only one installation. Who did the Ostians work for? It is hardly conceivable that garments were transported from Rome to Ostia to be cleaned. Rome certainly had his own facilities. They may have finished cloth for the elite of the surrounding hinterland? Or perhaps we might surmise that Ostia did import textile sthat had to be prepared for the local market. Perhaps Ostia, as the port of entry for exotic cloth, was responsible for cleaning and preparing that cloth directly at the harbour before transporting it to Rome and the surrounding area. Sometimes archaeology can tell a story where no document survives.
Further reading
Pietrogrande, Le fulloniche, Scavi di Ostia VIII, 1976.
Miko Flohr, The World of the Fullo. Work, Economy, and Society in Roman Italy, Oxford, University Press, 2013.
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