ABSTRACT
In architecture, luxury was derived from Sybaris. The place was synonymous with luxury. Curiously, ‘Plato had coined the word “Sybarite” as a proverbial term meaning a person that lived in luxury’2 and it applies still today. Established as a Greek colony at the end of the eighth century BC in Magna Graecia (Great Greece), ancient Sybaris was positioned on the Ionian coast, now Calabria in southern Italy.3 Part of the colony was founded by rich Doric traders who migrated from the region of Achaia in the Greek Peloponnese islands.4 The migration was the outcome of increased population density, drought and, increasingly, the limited availability of agricultural land in the Peloponnese.5 Then both the Sybaris plain and the polis were positioned between the Crati and Sybaris Rivers.6 Sybaris grew rich and powerful because of the fertile plain on which it stood, compared to the islands of the Peloponnese.
