The last images of Araldo De Luca were taken on ones of most important and suggestive archaeologic site in the world, the city of Pompei. This photographic compaign lasted one mounth, and is a part of a wider work started so one year ago, concerning the charming houses of Pompei.

Map of the city

The city took its shape from the end of the old lava stream on which it lay, which ran southeast from Vesuvius. The city is 30 m above the sea level and a short distance from Sarno river, in a suggestive position, praised in roman age from Seneca. Pompei shows the topography of a Roman town; it was built on an elliptical plane and was divided by a regular network of streets intersecting at right angles. The most important streets were the street of Nola and the street Stabiana. During the widening of the city, were built other two streets, the Abundantia street and the street of Forum, situated near the big civil Forum. The Forum, a vast rectangular square, was the fulcrum of the political, religious and economic life of the town, and it is bordered by the main public buildings. In the periferic zone were edificated the Theatre, the Amphitheatre, the Palaestra and the Temple. There were many shops and laundries, like fullonica of Stephanus, and termopolia, like the Thermopolium of Asellina, a Roman bar where hot and cold drinks were sold. It has been preserved in its entirety. It contains crockeries, oil lamps and cups. The foods were conserved in anphoras.

History of the city

Pompeii was founded in the 8th century B.C. by the Oscans, a tribe of peasants. By the 6th century B.C. the area was under Greek influence. About 400 B.C. the city was conquered by the Samnites. Rome conquered Pompeii in 80 B.C. Pompei was under the roman influence during the Republican and Imperial age. Thanks to Emperor Augustus the roman culture was spread in Pompei. On the contrary Caligola caused a political crisis. This crisis was solved by Nerone until 59 A.C., when the imperator killed his mother Agrippina.

The Vesuvio eruption

The most memorable vulcanic eruption in the history of civilization began about on 24 August 79 A.D. The mountain of Vesuvio awakened with unimaginable force 17 1/2 years after the devastating earthquake of 62 A.D. There had been no real warning of the explosion, though wells suddenly went dry 10 days earlier and the cows grazing on the slopes of Vesuvius were behaving strangely. Many victims of eruptions were finded in the houses and on the streets. The great part of the images from Pompei is about the beautiful houses that were found. The one part of the photographic compaign regards some of this houses.

House of Citarista

It's one of the most luxurious houses of Pompei (Roman period); it takes his name from the bronze statue of Apollo Citaredo, now located in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. It is the result of the fusion of two big houses. The vestibulum leads to the tuscan atrium with marble impluvium. There is another atrium and three peristyles, peristilyum inferior, peristilyum medianum and superior peristilyum. The natatio is very nice, with groups of bronze animals . The rooms of the house are richly decorated with pictures. Particolary many of them like the wall painting Paris Judgment and the others likes which decorate the oecus in Third Style, like Apollo and Poseidon, Nemesi and the swann, Venus and Mars.

House of Sacellum Iliacum

The name of the house derives from the vault of lararium of Achille covered by fine decorations. Beautiful is the frieze under the vault, in which there are some bas-relief that represent some episodes from the last book of Iliad. In the centre of vault there is the wall painting of Ganymede Abduction. On one wall there is the wall painting of Selene and Endymion. Notable is the Room of Elephants, with frescos in Second Style and floor polychromatich mosaic that divides the room in two parts. A similar decorative structure is in the cubiculum that is near the hall, with red painting wall and frame with floral patterns. Very fine are also the alcova and the walls painting of anteroom: one of Bacchus and Ariadne and other one with Silenus.

House of Menander

This house, like the House of the Cupids, was belonged to Quintus Poppæus. His family, the Poppeii, was very influential and was related to Empress Poppea Sabina. The House is one of the most luxurious domus in Pompei and it is divided in many parts. There are the Atrium complex, the Peristyle complex, the kitchen quarter, the thermal zone, the stableyard area, the staff quarters and the House. The architectonic structure develops in a traditional way, with vestibulum, atrium, tablinum, peristyle and triclinium. The atrium complex includes a large anteroom with Corinthian capitals that conducts to an atrium with marble impluve. In the right corner there is a lararium (domestic oratory) in the shape of a little temple with tuscan columns and plaster frame. In the House there are many walls painting Some of this shows the Iliadic cycle: Ulysses tearing Cassandra away from the Palladium (but it is Ajax in the Homeric version), Cassandra, the Trojan Horse and Laocöon. The complex of peristyle has a Doric colonnade and the garden is closed by a parapet decorated with herons and a hunting scene. On the northern side there is a oecus with a green background and on top a frieze portraying the rape of the Lapiths women by the centaurs. At the center of the floor there is a small mosaic with an emblem portraying pygmies on the Nile. At the bottom of the garden there is a library, a private votive chapel and a rectangular exedra framed by two other exedras with apse. In the central exedra there is a painting of two sitting poets: the one reciting is Menander, while the other is probably Euripides.Also there are some tragic masks on yellow background. The exedras with apse are decorated with Aphrodite. The private votive chapel contains a domestic oratory made of masonry; there we can see two casts of the wooden portraits of the ancestors (imagines maiorum). The reception rooms are on the eastern side of the garden. At the center there is a huge hall (oecus triclinare). The house has a small bath area. The thermal zone shows a room painted with frescos in Second Style, a calidarium and a tepidarium with mosaic floor. The reconstruction of a farm cart (only parts in iron and bronze are original) is exhibited in the stable (equile). A case containing 118 pieces of silverware weighing 24 kilograms was hidden in the basement of the house, kept in a wood shrine. The Menander treasure includes plates, glass, cup, spoons. The objects are made of gold, bronze and silver. There are also objects for the beauty treatement, like a mirror with female relief. In the Menandre boot there are also some jewells, like bracelet, ring and armilla. The silverware is exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

House of the Ephebe

This is the typical house of the middle-class. It is the result of an aggregation of two houses with three entrance doors. There is the anteroom painted with Genius and an atrium. In the House are many walls painting of Narcissus, Apollo, Daphne and Venus. The house has a little triclinium with an emblem on the floor and, on the wall, a still life with a fish hamper (xenion). In front of this room there is a bigger covered triclinium with a beautiful mosaic floor. At the center of the floor there is an emblem made of polychromatic marble inlays and glass pastes (opus sectile). The walls of triclinium are decorated with fantastic architectures and wall painting. The room is sourrounded by a frieze on plaster relief. A big quantity of plate that was in the room like a bronze statuettes of Placentarii now is kept in the Archaeological Museum in Naples. The masonry counter of tablinum is decorated with paintings portraying Mars and Venus with a castellum aquæ. During the summer, meals were served in another dining-room summer triclinium located in the garden under a pergola and near a fountain. There was the paradeisos with wild animals and on one sides there were the frescos with a vaste Nilotic scene. The House of the Ephebe is named after the classical bronze statue (National Archaeological Museum in Naples) adapted to a lamp-holder, the Efebus lampadophoros, which was found in the house.

House of the Impluvium

Even this house was reconstructed after the earthquake of 62; it has a grandiose atrium and the tablinium, a rich decoration of the basin of impluvium dressed of mosaic and an inlay of polycrome marble and, in a cubicula, a gynæceum scene. Near the tablinum thre is a room (cubiculum) with walls decorated in Second Style, and a portrait with erotic scene.

House of the Golden Bracelet

In the triclinium of the House has been found in fragments, then recomposed, a wall painting of a garden that shows a luxuriant vegetation reproduced with minute care, in which fly every type of birds; around the oscillum of marble is suspended. In the house there are many others paintings and frescos, like the walls paintings of the oecus painted on black background with many oscillum. The oscillum is a big circles in marble, that was hung to oscillate and to be visible from both the sides. The oscillum were used in the ornamentation and they were decorated with reliefs figures. Many have been found in Pompeii. A variation is the oscillum of pelta form or crescent that was the preferred shield of the Amazons and Dionysus adorned with reliefs or with griffons heads.

 

House of the Orchard

The house, also named the House of the Floral Cubiculum shows two cubicola with the painted walls preserve the frescos of two lemon trees, full of fruits; besides, in other paintings, there are oranges and limes and pinakes. It has been proved that the reproductions of fruit in Pompeians paintings are tightly realistic, therefore, they have an undisputed documentary value. There is a tuscan atrium and a peristylum. The decoration of the house is in Three Style, like show the cubicola, the Black Cubiculum that shows black walls and the mosaic floor and the Floral Cubiculum. Near this room there is a triclinium decorated in Three Style, with a beautiful mosaic floor and a ceiling vault with Bacchus with a panther and others symbols of Dionysian cult. There is the floral cubiculum, with painted garden with birds, statue and snakes.

House of the Faun

The House of the Faun, so named from the statue of a Dancing Satyr found in this House, was among the largest and most elegant in Pompeii. The mosaic emblema found on the floors (now in the Naples Museum) are the most beautiful that have survived to modern times. The plan of the House of the Faun is composed by a atrium peristylum tablinium and a exedra with the Alexander Mosaic, now located in archaeological Museum of Naples. There are also a lararium and a garden with fountain. The wall decoration, whit frescos in the First Style, in the more important rooms was left unaltered to the last, and is well preserved. Removed from the House of the Faun and now in the Naples Museum there is the detailed mosaic of marine life in the Bay of Naples was created with tiny tesserae. In the center an octopus is seen fighting a lobster. To the left is a small bird looking down from a rock.

House of the Meleager

It has a graceful peristyle with a large pool in the garden; opening off it a hall, the oecus corinthius with a colonnade round the inner walls. There are some walls painting with Maenad and a table with cartibulum.

House of the Centenary

It?s so called because it was excavated in the 18th centenary of the eruption (1879). It?s a very complex building, probably resultant by the fusion of three independent residences. It has the entrance, atrium with Lararium painted with the wall painting of Dionysus,it's now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Beyond it lie a tablinium and a peristyle, the front wing of it forms a loggia. In the garden of the house was found the celebrated statuette of a Satyr with wine-skin that now is located in National Archaeological Museum of Naples, with the mosaic emblem of Medusa and a marble statue of Hermaphrodite. Notable is the room that has a fountain with a nimpheus. The house has many cubicola with Fourth Style walls painting and a large Thermal zone. There are the oecus and the triclinum.

House of the Silver Wedding

 This monumental house, similar to a palace, was built in the second century B.C. It was given this name because it was excavated in 1893, while the Italian sovereigns King Humbert and Queen Margaret of Savoy was celebrating their silver wedding anniversary. Its tetrastyle monumental atrium has Corinthian columns made of grey tufa. The House has a peristylum and two gardens. The second garden has an open summer triclinium. Among all the courtly rooms, the most interesting is a triclinium supported by four red porphyry columns (oecus corinthius). There is also a tablinium with Fourth Style walls painting and others cubicola with painted walls. The house has a small private bath.

House of the Labyrinth

This noble house, that dates back to the Samnite period, has two atria and a large peristyle. His name derives from a mosaic which portrays the fight between Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The sumptuous main hall is of the type described by Vitruvius as oecus Corinthius; it has ten columns leaning against the walls that stress the spatial effect of architectonic paintings. The house had private baths and a bakery equipped with three millstones.

House of the Vettii

This house was owned by two freedmen who became wealthy businessmen in Pompeii: Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus, and from their names the house gots its name. Originally the house had two atria but in the 1st century, it was altered substantially so that the visitor passed directly from the atrium into the peristyle court and guarden in the back of the house. In the foyer of the House of the Vettii there is a fresco of Priapus weighing his enormous phallus. Priapus was a god of fertility and he was meant to portray the abundant wealth and good fortune of the house's occupants. The atrium is decorated with walls painting of sacrifice, hunting, and cupids "surfing" on the backs of sea creatures, including dolphins, lobsters, and crabs. The garden is sourrounded of peristylum and is decorated with bronze statuettes of cupids, echoing the theme begun in the atrium and other busts and heads in marble. There are also fountains in the sides of the garden. One of two hall of the house is famous because the walls are decorated with a frieze that shows many infant cupids and psyches which carry out a range of human activities: viniculture, metal-working and jewelry making, perfume production, cloth preparation, and chariot racing. The upper part of the walls in the room is decorated with red panels, centered with scenes of Maenads and Satyrs, framed by delicate architectural elements. At the bottom of the columnar panels were small vignettes of sacrifice. Here the averted sacrifice of Iphigenia, a deer has been substituted in her stead. The other triclinium is painted in the Fourth Style with central panels, for the most part painted with mythological scenes. There are Daedalus and Pasiphae, the punishment of Ixion and Bacchus watching Ariadne as she lies sleeping, abandoned by Theseus. The oecus is painted in Fourth Style frescos with mythological scenes, Hercules strangling the snakes, the punishment of Dirce and Penteus being torn apart. There is the Lararium with the wall painting of Lares and two cubicola, the cubiculum with erotic wall painting and another one decorated in Fourth Style with Satyrs, Poets and Mercury.

House of the Tragic Poet

The house received its name at the time of excavation, in consequence of a mosaic emblem which was found in the tablinum. Many pictures were found in the house, like the painting of Hera and Zeus, from atrium, the painting of Iphigenia, from peristyle and the Fourth Style frescos in the triclinium. There are also two cubicola with Fourth Style decoration and a mosaic floor.

House of the Marcus Lucretius Fronto

Marcus Lucretius Fronto was a member of one of the most important families to settle in Pompeii during the Augustan Age. This house was modest in size but shows refined decoration in the Third Style, 35-45 A.D. The perystile is decorated with frescos that show hunting scenes. The atrium is decorated with Three Style frescos. The walls of tablinum are painted with Fourth Style frescos and show the Triumph of Bacchus and Mars and Venus. There are two cubicola decorated with Fourth Style frescos. One of this contains frescos representing Narcissus at the Fountain, the Toilet of Venus, Theseus and Ariadne and Pero and Micon. In the other there are the portraits of the Frontone's sons. A raised garden with typical African landscape is at the back of the house.

House of the Fabius Rufus

The house is situated on the southwest edge of the city and it has a splendid view of the sea. The largest room of the house is a cubiculum decorated with Fourth Style frescos that shows Helios, Bachus and Venus. On a black-ground enlived by animals, vases, musical instruments and others, we can see the three-dimensional effects, enhanced, for example by the woman on the balcony on the left. Another room is decorated with Three Style frescos and shows a Venus with Cupid. In the House was found a bronze table, a glass panel decorated with Satyr Maenad and Ariadne and some cosmetic instruments.

House of the Small Fountain

The fountain with a niche shape, is completely covered by rich mosaics, composed by impasto of glass. On the wall of peristylum around the niche there is a beautiful landscape that represents the sea and some houses on the shore.There is a tuscan atrium.

House of the Large Fountain

In the House of the Large Fountain there are some copies of bronze statues representing a putto with a dolphin and a fisherman. The house take his name by a large fountain with a niche decorated with polycromatic mosaic that shows a theatrical mask. There is also a votive chapel.