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Casa del Mitreo, 'the House of the Mithraeum' is a house built at the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd century AC outside the Mérida city walls. Its size and the decoration of some of its rooms undoubtedly show that its owners were people of Hellenistic culture who were important within the society of Mérida.
The whole building is set up around three courtyards. You enter the first one through a stairway and you arrive onto a tetra style atrium with a pond to collect water, the impluvium. It seems that this area, like other areas in the house, had a second floor because of the steps that are still preserved. Several rooms come out onto this atrium, built like other ones in the house: a masonry base and the rest of the wall in rammed earth. The walls were plastered and decorated with paintings.
One of these rooms preserves the mosaic of the Cosmos. It represents a colourful and realistic mixed group of human figures that represent the different elements of the known universe, going from terrestrial and marine elements until celestial elements, but they all revolve around the essential figure of Eternity (Aeternitas).
References:Visby Cathedral (also known as St. Mary’s Church) is the only survived medieval church in Visby. It was originally built for German merchants and inaugurated in 1225. Around the year 1350 the church was enlarged and converted into a basilica. The two-storey magazine was also added then above the nave as a warehouse for merchants.
Following the Reformation, the church was transformed into a parish church for the town of Visby. All other churches were abandoned. Shortly after the Reformation, in 1572, Gotland was made into its own Diocese, and the church designated its cathedral.
There is not much left of the original interior. The font is made of local red marble in the 13th century. The pulpit was made in Lübeck in 1684. There are 400 graves under the church floor.