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House of the Restaurant

Address: Regio IX, Insula 5
Area: 797 square meters
Rooms: 15

House of the Restaurant is located on the west side of Vicolo del Centenario, a narrow road that lies south of Via di Nola. The House of the Restaurant is in rather shabby condition. It was excavated in 1878. After its excavation, the building was neglected and left to collapse under the force of natural elements. The building is connected with the neighboring popina or lupanarium - private brothel. This part of the house had a separate entrance at door number 16 on an unnamed street, which shapes the southern limit of the insula. Although the Romans were quite liberal towards sex for money, hardly a family, living here strongly advertised their business in a decent society. It was rather a dirty little secret about which everyone knew.

House of the Restaurant, like many other rich mansions, was built as two buildings, which were later merged into one, having bought the house of a neighbor. Anteroom (a) opens to the west side of Vicolo del Centenario Street. Although the walls of the hallway have lost all their original fresco decoration, the mosaic covering is practically intact. The coating is made of thin white mosaic framed by a wide black frame. There is a decorative threshold between the entrance hall and the atrium, the central living room of the House of the Restaurant, consisting of black decorative figures that form a stylized floral pattern on a white background. The entrance hall opens into a rectangular atrium with a central home pool. The walls of the atrium retain several large areas of plaster, which, apparently, were covered with large red panels decorated with mythological scenes, but none of them remain in place.

When the House of the Restaurant was excavated, then the accepted practice was to rob the house of everything that could be carried away. It should be noted that this barbaric practice, however, has preserved for the history of beautiful murals that would otherwise have been lost. The murals in question include Piram and Euba, Aeneas (who fled from Troy) before Queen Dido (the legendary queen who founded Carthage) and Bacchus with Ariadne. These frescoes can now be seen in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

On the north and south sides of the atrium are large ala (d) and (d '), which are in the same condition as the atrium itself. A door in the south ala wall (d ') gives access to the second atrium (l). The best preserved rooms in the main part of the house are bedrooms-cubula (e) and (f).

The cubiculum room (e) is decorated with frescoes in the fourth style with large red panels with internal decorative borders on a yellow background above a lower geometric frieze. The central panel on each wall contained a mythological scene. On the one remaining scene, Venus is shown with a group of cupids. The cubiculum (f) on the south side of the pharynx is similarly decorated with red panels on a yellow background. All three central mythological scenes exist today. They may not be of the highest quality, but they demonstrate naive simplicity.

Private brothel