© Valeria Viola, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004153073_019 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. chapter 18 Secret Routes and Blurring Borders: The New Apartment of Giuseppe Papè di Valdina (Palermo, 1714–1742) Valeria Viola By ascribing various names and functions to a significant number of differ ent rooms, early modern treatises suggest that an increasing specialisation of domestic spaces was in progress in Italian residential architecture.1 Despite the manifold nuances often emerging from case studies, scholars have usually identified this period as showing the beginning of a rising quest for intimacy and privacy connected to a more defined division between anterooms open to visitors and more withdrawn backrooms, owners’ and servants’ areas, male and female spaces, and so on.2 However, other studies investigating the inter actions between domestic spaces and the people experiencing them have argued that the spatial arrangement of aristocratic dwellings long remained adaptable to multiple uses and allowed continuous negotiations of roles and 1 This case study was first approached in my PhD thesis Architecture, Devotion, Fam

The story of our rooms - BBC News Megan Lane BBC News Magazine How many rooms in your home? This has been a census question in the UK since 1871. But what does the number and type of rooms say about how houses have evolved over the centuries? In medieval times, many Europeans cooked, ate, slept and socialised in one big room. By the start of the 21st Century, the average British home had 5.34 rooms, according to 2001 Census figures. Whether this has gone up or down will become clear when 2011's UK census forms are analysed. Centuries ago, there was no such thing as a kitchen, a living room or a bedroom for anyone but the rich. There was a central hearth for warmth and to cook food, with straw-filled pallets laid on the floor for sleeping. Over time, walls went up to divide the home into specialised areas - new rooms evolved, partly down to technology, but also to our changing attitudes to privacy, cleanliness and class. Today, down the walls come again. Central heating and extractor fans mean we no longer need walls to keep heat in and cooking smells out. And one room is heading for extinction, or at least being indistinguishable, says Lucy Worsley, curator of Historic Roya