a town block or island

(the Island of Reil): the cortical area that lies below the fissure of Sylvius; it is considered by some anatomists as the fifth lobe of the brain; it may be associated with the viscera

The blocks of buildings within a town. Also an island

(Latin) Roman apartment complexes; an insula might have included up to eight apartment blocks built around an open courtyard, which provided much needed light; the complexes were three to five stories tall and could easily block the light for neighboring buildings; the first floor often housed merchants' shops, or tabernae; during the rise of the Roman empire, the majority of the Roman population was housed in rooms rented in insulae; these tenements became overcrowded and vulnerable to fire built with timber and mud bricks; thin walls were made out of opus craticum, which was a woven mixture of cane and mortar; the walls were neither waterproof nor fireproof; eventually emperors, such as Nero, imposed fire regulations; as a result of the upper stories lacked running water sanitation suffered; by the end of the fourth century BCE, insulae outnumbered domi twenty-six to one. Roman Living