![]() The lower part of the wall is painted to look like a balustrade with ivy growing on it, with birds and lizards below. A body of water filled with a variety of fish and marine animals was "dramatically" painted on the parapet that encircled the four walls of the nymphaeum several species are represented accurately enough to identify. The garden nymphaeum is a particularly rich example of combining painting with architectural elements to create the ambience of a country villa. The House of the Centenary is known for its large and diverse collection of paintings in the Third and Fourth Pompeiian styles. Art Painting of a fountain, from the nymphaeum Other scholars categorize Room 43 simply as a bedroom ( cubiculum), which often featured erotic imagery, and find it unnecessary to conclude that sexual entertainment was offered to guests there. ![]() A small opening oddly positioned in the wall may have been an aperture for voyeurism. A few similar rooms in Pompeiian houses suggest that the intention was to create the ambience of a brothel in a home, for parties at which participants played the roles of prostitute or client, or for which actual prostitutes were hired to entertain guests. It has been suggested that one secluded room (numbered 43), which was decorated with explicit scenes of female-male intercourse, functioned as a private "sex club." Guests would have entered the smaller, more private atrium, then passed down a corridor and through a triclinium and antechamber to reach it. Another records a slave's bid for freedom: "Officiosus escaped on November 6 in the consulate of Drusus Caesar and M. ![]() Erotic painting on the wall of the "sex club", with damage revealing brickwork under the painted panelsĪ graffito in the latrine uses the rare word cacaturit ("wants to shit") found also once in the Epigrams of Martial. The house had its own bakery, located in a cellar under the service quarters on the west side. The dining room itself was decorated with vertical stalks entwined with tendrils on which birds perch, with leaf-adorned candelabra in the panels between. The triclinium or dining room was situated so that the guest of honor could view the enclosed garden. The smaller atrium might have been for private family and service access. Of the two atria, the grander one leads to the most highly decorated rooms. It belongs to the luxurious " tufa" period of Pompeiian architecture, characterized by the use of fine-grained gray volcanic tufa that was quarried around Nuceria. Within a block, doorways are numbered in clockwise or counter-clockwise order the Centenary is numbered IX.8.3–6. ![]() Site and features įor the purposes of archaeological and historical study, Pompeii is divided into nine regions, each of which contains numbered blocks ( insulae). Īmong the varied paintings preserved in the House of the Centenary is the earliest known depiction of Vesuvius, as well as explicit erotic scenes in a room that may have been designed as a private "sex club". Īlthough the identity of the house's owner eludes certainty, arguments have been made for either Aulus Rustius Verus or Tiberius Claudius Verus, both local politicians. In the last years before the eruption, several rooms had been extensively redecorated with a number of paintings. The Centenary underwent a remodeling around 15 AD, at which time the bath complex and swimming pool were added. Built in the mid-2nd century BC, it is among the largest houses in the city, with private baths, a nymphaeum, a fish pond (piscina), and two atria. The house was discovered in 1879, and was given its modern name to mark the 18th centenary of the disaster. The House of the Centenary (Italian Casa del Centenario, also known as the House of the Centenarian) was the house of a wealthy resident of Pompeii, preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. A wall painting in the House of the Centenary features the earliest known representation of Vesuvius ![]()
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