The concept of the single-entrance, courtyard house offers a means of exploring the relationship between cultural expectations about domestic life, and the physical form taken by the house itself. It re-focuses attention away from superficial aspects of the appearance of the buildings themselves and instead places the emphasis on how the spaces they created may have worked as lived environments. At the same time it also provides a frame for thinking beyond the space of the prosperous Classical urban-dweller, to encompass the houses – and the experiences – of other social groups and the residents of culturally Greek communities in other times and places. Broadening the perspective in this way while at the same time distinguishing between these different groups of evidence deomnstrates that although the Classical model is striking for its widespread use and for the variety of architectural forms through which it was materialised, it was actually a relatively socially-restricted and short-lived phenomenon.