Inside Pompeii: The Houses, Baths and Public Buildings

Nine buildings carry most of a first visit, and knowing what each one was for is the difference between a walk through masonry and a walk through a city. This page takes them one at a time, in the order the park's own routes reach them. The walking tours pompeii italy listed here reach most of them.

The Forum and the Temple of Jupiter

The civil Forum was the core of daily life: administration, justice, business, markets and the main public cults, all round one paved rectangle. It began as an open clay space and was regularised between the third and second centuries BC, given porticoes and a tuff floor, then re-paved in travertine under the empire. Some of those slabs are out of position and still carry the grooves cut for the bronze letters of a large inscription.

The Temple of Jupiter closes the north end, and its facade is deliberately aligned on Mount Vesuvius. Stand at the south end of the square and look north: the temple and the volcano sit in the same frame. It is the composition every photograph of Pompeii ends up making.

The Basilica

Fifteen hundred square metres, entered from the Forum through five doorways divided by tuff pillars, with three naves inside and two rows of brick columns carrying Ionic capitals. Business was done here and justice administered from a raised suggestum at the western end, where the judges sat. The walls were finished in stucco worked to look like large blocks of marble.

It dates to 130–120 BC, which makes it one of the oldest buildings of its type anywhere in the Roman world. That is worth a moment: the basilica plan is the one Christian churches later took over wholesale.

The Sanctuary of Apollo

One of the oldest places of worship in the city, on the route up from the Marina Gate to the public heart of it. Deep excavation found vases, votive objects and terracotta decoration from an archaic temple of the sixth century BC beneath what stands now. What stands now is a temple on a podium inside a porticoed courtyard, an altar at its centre. It was rebuilt between the third and second centuries BC and lightly renovated under Nero.

The Macellum

The food market: a tuff quadriporticus with shops along its southern side. A hall for the imperial cult is raised opposite the entrance, where copies of two marble statues stand. At the centre of the courtyard was a tholos, a circular structure used for selling and cleaning fish. The portico walls carried scenes of daily life — selling fish, selling poultry — alongside mythological subjects. Built between 130 and 120 BC.

The Stabian Baths

The main entrance is on Via dell'Abbondanza and opens into a large courtyard, a pool on one side and a colonnade on the other. The men's suite runs apodyterium, frigidarium, tepidarium, calidarium — changing room, cold, warm, hot. Hot air from the furnaces circulated through wall piping and double floors.

The women's suite is arranged the same way, smaller and plainer. It has its own door in the north-west corner of the courtyard, marked MULIER and opening onto Via del Lupanare. Separating the sexes was normal practice. The baths date to the second century BC and are among the oldest known in the Roman world.

The House of the Faun

Three thousand square metres, an entire block, laid out in the second century BC: the grandest private house in the city. The owner's standing is announced from the street. HAVE — welcome — is set into the pavement outside, the doorway is framed by decorated pilasters, and the threshold is inlaid in coloured marble.

Inside are two atria and two peristyles. A copy of the dancing faun that names the house stands in the impluvium of the main atrium. In the exedra lies a copy of the Alexander Mosaic — Alexander against Darius, one of the most famous images to survive from antiquity. Both originals are in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Know that before you plan a day around seeing them here.

The House of the Tragic Poet

A traditional atrium house, and the most quoted doorway in Pompeii. The CAVE CANEM mosaic — beware of the dog — is set at the entrance, now protected under glass. The house is named for a mosaic of actors preparing for a performance. Of its large mythological paintings the one still visible is Ariadne abandoned by Theseus.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton set part of The Last Days of Pompeii here in 1838, which is one reason the house is on every itinerary. Excavated 1824–25.

The House of the Menander

A large house belonging to a high-ranking family — Quintus Poppaeus Sabinus, of the family of Poppaea Sabina, Nero's second wife. The atrium carries frescoes of scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the house takes its name from a portrait of the Athenian playwright Menander in the portico.

Under the small bath suite is a cellar. A box was found there holding 118 pieces of silverware, hidden before restoration work began — mostly plates and cups for banqueting, with shapes for serving wine. It is now in Naples. Excavated between 1928 and 1932.

The theatres and the Amphitheatre

The Large Theatre was cut into the natural slope of the hill in the middle of the second century BC and reworked in the Roman manner later. An inscription at the eastern entrance corridor names the architect of the Augustan works: Marcus Artorius Primus — one of very few Roman architects whose name survives on his own building. Those works covered the stage, the numbering of the seats and the velarium, the awning drawn over the audience on hot days. It was the first large public building completely freed of eruption deposits.

The Amphitheatre is at the far end of the site by the Piazza Anfiteatro entrance, which is why so many two-hour tours never reach it. Built in 70 BC, holding about 20,000 people, it is the oldest amphitheatre known in the Roman world. External double staircases carry you to the upper seats; the arena is separated from the audience by a parapet painted with gladiators.

Nine buildings, compared

And the one outside the walls

The Villa of the Mysteries stands beyond the Herculaneum Gate, and it is the reason the ticket grade matters so much here. It is named for the hall whose continuous fresco covers three walls. Life-size figures stand on a deep red ground, showing a rite connected with Dionysus, who appears on the central wall with Ariadne. Around them are fauns, maenads and winged figures. In the lower right a young woman is ritually flogged across another woman's lap.

It is one of the best-preserved paintings to survive from the ancient world. The complex goes back to the second century BC and took its present shape in 80–70 BC, the same years as the frieze. It also has a working wine-production area with a rebuilt press. An Express ticket will not open it.

Sources

Building descriptions, dates and excavation years are from A Guide to the Pompeii Excavations, published by the archaeological authority for Pompeii. Prices and hours change — check before you travel.