Brickwork

In antiquity Roman bricks seem to have been of a size quite different from that of typical American bricks, for which the standard is 8" long, 2-1/4" high and 3-5/8" wide. The Roman standard appears to have been about 12" long, or sometimes up to 15”, and less than 2" thick, and while one can't usually see the dimension of width in a completed structure, according to wiki sources the width of common variations of Roman brick sizes could be between one and two Roman feet (a bit smaller than our own measure the foot). This suggests to me that rather than creating the full thickness of a wall from several different building materials, of which one might be a thin decorative external layer of brick, the whole wall from inside to outside might be laid at one go, using very wide bricks. But naturally, there would be a lot of variation of sizes, even used in a single construction.

The vertical bricks over the doorways in the first image below seem to me possibly laid with their longer "width" as the length, rather than having special longer bricks made for this more or less decorative use.

The second image shows a part of the Ponte Rotto (Broken Bridge). It was replaced by the Palatine Bridge in the 1880s, but portions of the original Roman bridge still stand.

In the third image, at the Trajan's Market museum, a model of how the original building is thought to have looked is displayed in one of the vaulted "market" spaces with original brick on the walls, though the vault is a different, differentiating material.

Much brickwork must have been covered over by plaster, marble or other materials, and it's my understanding that the holes in the wall of this part of the Trajan’s Market museum,

as well as the square interruptions of the original left part of the wall in the second image (the righthand bricks are reproductions), function in connecting those materials to the underlying brick.

Nowadays the brickwork itself is appreciated on its own, for the beauty of its texture and patterns, including in new construction.

Left above: The long bricks on this staircase up to the Gianicolo look pretty old.

Middle: This Trastevere street building has a stucco-type exterior but at some point some very old brick was uncovered and someone decided to highlight it, literally.

Right: The lighter colored brick is the old, thin flat bricks, and the darker part is filled in with a different kind altogether.

The first picture in this panel shows a chic house on the outskirts of Trastevere whose modern renovation incorporates several kinds of brick to create different patterns and textures.

Second, across the street from the building that houses our current apartment, a full-block new hotel owned by the luxury brand Bulgari is being built with a brick exterior.

In the third picture, the brick is used for the interior of a nice restaurant, where Steve is reading the wine menu.