What the rich houses in Pompeii looked like

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On February 18, 2020, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii inaugurated three new houses for visitors. But already on March 8, all museums, libraries, archives, theaters and other public cultural institutions in Italy were quarantined due to the threat of the spread of coronavirus. Now you can get acquainted with the museum collections only on the net. Yuli Uletova, author of the site "Pompeii: Step by Step", invites readers to take advantage of this opportunity and look into the homes of the ancient Pompeians.

House of the Faun

Pompeii is not a very large city in the provinces, therefore there were no multi-storey insul-"human beings", as in the capital, here. Insula in Pompeii is an ordinary quarter, in which, as a rule, there were two or three residential buildings and up to a dozen tabern shops. Some of the houses were so large that they alone occupied the entire insula. Such, for example, is the House of the Faun with an area of almost 3000 square meters.

The VI region of Pompeii is highlighted in blue on the plan. 1 - House of the Faun, 11 - House of the Vettii (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

More than half of its territory is occupied by two beautiful peristyles - open spaces with flower beds, rare trees, paths and a fountain. But the owner spared no expense for the living quarters either. The decoration of the house was done in the I "style" (we have already talked about the Pompeian "styles"), simple, but very expressive, since the craftsmen, using plaster and paint, imitated expensive finishing stone and architectural elements: columns, pilasters, cornices, etc.

This "style" was widespread in Pompeii in the II century BC, when the city still belonged to the local Italic tribes - Oscans and Samnites. Preserving this ancient decoration over the centuries, renovating and restoring it, the hosts made it clear to the guests that they were not chasing after fashion, they were committed to the traditions and simplicity of their ancestors.

Plan of the House of the Faun (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

The most impressive elements of the interiors of this urban manor are probably its floor mosaics. In front of the monumental austere portal of the house, right on the sidewalk, guests were greeted by a simple mosaic with the Latin word HAVE - "hello", lined with colored limestone tiles.

The walls on either side of the entrance bore many inscriptions, of which practically nothing has survived. This means that this street had high traffic, which is not surprising - a few minutes' walk from the House of the Faun there were Forum Baths and the Forum itself.

HAVE mosaic in front of the entrance to the House of the Faun (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

In the fautsas - the "dressing room" in front of the vestibule corridor, where the doorkeeper met the guests, immediately behind the open doors of the portal at the height of the second floor, two trompe l'oeil were arranged - the "facades" of the Lararia temples. The floor of the Fausians is decorated with a geometric mosaic of triangles of colored limestone.

Further, the eye of a passer-by, undoubtedly, was riveted by a stunning mosaic depicting garlands of leaves, flowers and fruits with two tragic masks woven into them. It immediately became clear - the owner of the house is not alien to the beautiful. The austere I "style" of the walls of the Fausians and the vestibule made it clear that people with taste, but without a tendency to pretentiousness, live here.

Faunas of the House of Faun (Yuli Uletova)

From here, from the entrance, everyone who looked into the house from the street could see the spacious atrium - the place where his clients and freedmen were waiting for the owner of the house. In ancient Rome, it was considered good form not to hide their ceremonial life from fellow citizens. This life - public, social - was a large part of the existence of the ancient Roman.

The road from home to the forum, temples, thermal baths, communication in the city, visiting theaters and gladiatorial fights - everything in this life was filled with the attention of fellow citizens. Atrium is the permissible level of penetration of society into the house of a Roman.

The atrium of the House of the Faun, like the entrance area, was exquisitely simple in decoration: I "style" on the walls, lava cement floors interspersed with marble pieces, and again a geometric mosaic, echoing the same in the fauns. In the atrium, she adorns the impluvium - a small pool in the center of the room, designed to collect rainwater.

Water entered the impluvium through a hole in the roof above it - a compluvium, which also played the role of a light window and an air duct. The sides of the impluvium were often decorated with a small sculpture; in the House of the Faun there is a bronze faun, which gave the name to the entire city estate. Of course, this is not the original - it is in the Naples Archaeological Museum, as, by the way, is the mosaic with garlands from the vestibule.

Atrium of the House of the Faun (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

The room next to the atrium, located in a straight line of sight from the street, is the tablin (mind), the master's office. Often this room had only two side walls, and was separated from the atrium by a curtain or light partition. By pushing aside this barrier, the owner of the house allowed passers-by to look into the house beyond the atrium.

In the tablin, a Roman could read business "papers", which were usually waxed wooden tablets, or "books", that is, papyrus scrolls (we also talked about them). Here it was also possible, with a tight curtain, to discuss business issues with the right people, to certify important documents with the help of a solicitor and witnesses, to dictate to a slave plans for the day or memoirs.

The owner of the House of Faun decorated the shoals of the wide opening in his tablin with ribbed pilasters "like marble", and the floor with three-dimensional mosaics of rhombuses. This mosaic looks so modern that it would do credit to the magician of optical illusion, Dutch artist Mauritz Escher.

Tablin mosaic in the House of the Faun (Yuli Uletova)

Mosaics also adorned the floors in almost all rooms that open onto the atrium: the bedrooms and two winter dining tricliniums. In most cases, this is not a mosaic covering the entire floor, but the central picture - an emblem made of small pieces of colored stone - a tesser.

The plots they depict are completely different: a cat grabbing a bird; ducks among the caught fish; the Dionysus boy riding a lion; inhabitants of the underwater world - shells, fish, octopuses and much more. All emblems are decorated with whimsical borders - mosaic frames.

But the most stunning mosaic awaited the guest of the property ahead. Having passed the atrium and bypassing the tablin along the side corridor, the visitor entered the first peristyle garden. The 28-column portico - a covered gallery on the sides of the garden - allowed walking in the garden in the rain and provided coolness in the heat. A marble pool with a fountain was arranged in the center of the garden.

The first garden was followed by the second - more grandiose, with an area of 32 by 35 meters and with a Doric portico of 46 columns. The gardens were divided by a number of rooms - two summer triclinia and an exedra between them. These kind of rooms did not have a special purpose, here you could relax or have a light meal in the fresh air, but without the scorching sun.

In this wonderful place between two gardens, the owner placed a real treasure - a huge mosaic "The battle of Alexander the Great with the Persian king." As many as 20 square meters filled with over one and a half million colored stone tesserae. It is assumed that the mosaic had a prototype - a picturesque painting from the end of the 4th century BC.

The amazing craftsmanship of the mosaicists and their creation was undoubtedly the pride of the house. The owners did not have to use the Exedra as a room at all, protecting the most valuable mosaic and showing it only to selected guests. But you can be sure that the fame of the masterpiece in the House of the Faun thundered all over Pompeii.

Mosaic of Alexander (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

Such large mosaics were usually assembled on the spot, and whole workshops worked on them for a long time. It is not hard to imagine in what anticipation and impatience the inhabitants of the house awaited the completion of the work.

All of these beautiful and undoubtedly very expensive mosaic paintings are now in the Naples Museum. However, the exedra is still adorned with the "Battle of Alexander with Darius."

Did the experts leave such a valuable mosaic in place, exposing it to rain, temperature extremes and other dangers of open space? Of course not! Contemporary masters have repeated the ancient miracle, perfectly copying the painting from the original.

This was the master's part of the house. Much less space was occupied by the office: premises for slaves, a kitchen, small therma-baths, stalls. Here, too, there was a more modest atrium, around which there were also small rooms. The decoration in these rooms, of course, was much more modest than that of the owners.

This house, even dilapidated, so impressed and delighted visitors from the very beginning of its opening in 1830 that it even became the hero of the novel by the English writer Bulwer-Lytton "The Last Days of Pompeii". And the elements of its interiors were fashionable in the decoration of houses in Europe "after antiquity." Undoubtedly, for contemporaries, the House of the Faun was an example of the harmony of space and architectural decor.

The House of the Faun is usually always open to visitors to Pompeii. The entire property can be traversed through a small door in the back wall of the second garden on Mercury Street. From here, a couple of steps to another famous Pompeian house - the House of the Vettii.

House of the Vettii

If the House of the Faun clearly belonged to an Italic - Oka or Samnite - noble family, which retained its dignity and traditions over the centuries, then the Vettii were definitely a family of freedmen. And in their house, small in comparison with the previous one, but luxurious in decoration, a completely different spirit reigned.

House of the Vettii (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

Freedmen are former slaves to whom their master gave freedom. Until the end of their lives, with their former master, they were in a "patron" - "client" relationship, which left a certain imprint on the life of a freedman.

Only in the second generation could freedmen qualify for the seat of the city magistrate. However, all this did not prevent them from engaging in trade, agriculture or craft. The Vettii, judging by the finds in the house, made their fortune on the trade in wine and agricultural products.

Since they did not have a family nest, the brothers Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitut bought two small houses in the VIth, aristocratic, district. These houses probably belonged to some impoverished old family, since their decoration was very elegant. But during the earthquake in 63, the houses were badly damaged and were sold to the Vettias.

During their rebuilding, the brothers had to fit their new dwelling into the existing plot, so slight deviations appeared in the standard layout of a Roman house (which we met in the House of the Faun). Although, on the whole, it turned out to be an ordinary rich house, not too large in size.

The opening of the House of the Vettii took place much later than the House of the Faun, in 1894. More than a hundred years have passed since the excavations of Pompeii began, and the attitude towards antiquities has changed. If earlier excavators first of all looked for magnificent "antiques" - valuable frescoes were cut out of the walls and placed in frames, like paintings, found objects were taken to the museum of the king - now the city itself was a museum.

For 50 years, free access to visitors has been open in Pompeii, and in addition to archaeological research, restoration work was carried out here. In general, the attitude towards antiquities has become much more careful.

As befits the possession of the rich, the House of the Vettiev abounded in wall paintings and interior decorations. And it was this house that was destined to become an example of a new cultural policy - after the completion of the excavations, the roofs were completely reconstructed, the interior was restored, and all garden decorations were placed in their places.

The entrance to the house is located in a quiet side street. But on its facade there were electoral inscriptions, in which they recommended one of the Vetti brothers, as well as other local politicians, to the magistrates.

Since the house was finished after 63 years, all of its decor is made in the IV "style". At the same time, the frescoes of the master's part of the house were ordered in the workshop, where wonderful artists worked, and the service rooms were painted by the master worse.

Nevertheless, despite the quality of the murals, in some interiors there is a lack of taste among its owners - for example, the peristyle is oversaturated with garden figures, herms, benches and fountains. As it is now called, "expensive and rich."

Already in a small square vestibule, individual images of frescoes announced the priorities of this house: a sheep, a bag, a caduceus - attributes of Mercury, the god of trade, including; a bearded Priapus with a phallus on the scales (we previously talked about the meaning of such paintings in Ancient Rome) - symbols of wealth and prosperity.

The already known fresco depicting Priapus in the vestibule of the House of the Vettii (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

It is impossible to describe all the frescoes of the House of the Vettii in a short article, so let's just note the most famous ones. On separate panels in the atria, cupids are hooligan: they ride on crabs and goats, fight among themselves, sell wine, and so on.

Cupids on the painting in the dining room of the peristyle (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

More industrious cupids fill a large frieze in the dining room of the peristyle - they harvest grapes and sell wine, weave and sell wreaths, prepare incense and perfume, and even make jewelry.

Atrium of the House of the Vettii (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

Various rooms of the house are decorated with paintings with mythological subjects: Ariadne, abandoned on Naxos; Leander sailing towards Gero; Eros and Pan; Ixion's punishment; Daedalus and Pasiphae; Amphion and Zet punish Dirka and the others. There are many scientific works, the authors of which are trying to explain the principle of the choice of the subjects of the frescoes by the Vettii.

Triclinium frescoes in the northeastern corner of the peristyle of the House of the Vettii (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

However, the same can be said about the picturesque and mosaic decor of the House of the Faun - according to many researchers, it constitutes a single concept, including the motives of Hellenistic Egypt and an allusion to the cult of Dionysus.

Triclinium frescoes in the southeast corner of the peristyle of the House of the Vettii (Parco archeologico di Pompei)

In January 2020, the House of the Vettii, which had been closed for restoration for a long time, reopened its doors to visitors. It remains to wait for the quarantine to end in Italy.