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House of the Bronze Bull

House of the Bronze Bull is located on the north side of Via di Nola just to the west of its intersection with the Vicolo di Cecilio Giocondo. The large mansion of the House of the Bronze Bull was named after a small statuette that stood at the fountain, which poured into a small decorative pool-impluvium in the atrium, that is a small pool in the living room of the house. The mansion is also sometimes called the House of L. Pontius Saxesus because of the seal with his name found near the main entrance. The house was excavated in 1836 and later forgotten. The lack of a roof left colorful murals unprotected. As a result, part of the frescoes of the House of the Bronze Bull were lost.

The chic entrance to the House of the Bronze Bull was erected from large pieces of tuff and covered with plaster. The top was crowned with curly capitols. Today these capitols are stored in the former market granary at the Forum of Pompeii. On the eastern wall of the entrance door was supplemented in the later phase of the mansion. This side door led to a smaller side entrance that could be used before or after normal reception hours and for less important visitors.

Entrance doorways open into the corridor, which during the excavations were covered with remains of frescoes of the first style, but mostly were decorated with frescoes in the third style. Today, virtually none of these decorations remain. In the rows there is a lime-cement floor, into which small pieces of lava and fragments of colored limestone and marble were inserted.

The corridor opens into a rectangular atrium, which has a surprisingly symmetrical layout. The monumental doorways in the rooms leaving the atrium were built even where there were no rooms themselves. The owner apparently wanted to maintain symmetry no matter what. In the center of the atrium living room is a marble pool. It is made of large slabs of white marble. Three fountains supplied water to the pool, which was rare in Pompeii. The fact that the living rooms were usually the highest rooms in the house, usually two floors. And a hole was made in the roofs. Through it, the water fell down and filled the pool. On a pedestal on the northern edge of the living room, there was a statuette of a bronze bull as a figure fountain; the second is a fountain that beat a stream of water in the center of the pool, while the third beat four small jets. The tap water entering these fountains flowed through the now lost lead pipe from the back of the house. 

The main feature of the peristyle-home garden is the back (north) wall, consisting of a large nympheum facade (m). This is a kind of home spring. Here, according to the ideas of the ancients, lived nymphs who patronized the water. Nymphaea was added when tap water was introduced into the house at the beginning of the first century AD. Pipe water was widely used throughout the house with five separate junction boxes in five different rooms to ensure that water is distributed and used in a controlled way. The junction box found in the peristyle is shown above.