LAUNDRY OF STEPHANUS - POMPEII

This is the only building in Pompeii which was originally built as a laundry and fuller’s workshop; the three other establishments of this kind were restructured residential buildings. The fuller’s workshop provided services to numerous clothiers, wool makers and tailors working in the town. According to the electoral slogans painted on the façade (“the united fullers recommend… Stephanus recommends’), the establishment has been attributed to a certain Stephanus. A press used to fold cloth was placed against the left wall of the large entrance hall. Past the entrance hall, we enter an atrium with a flat roof which served as a terrace to hang out the washing. Finer cloth was washed in the large parapeted tank in the middle of the atrium. The peristyle at the rear of the atrium has three intercommunicating stone tubs and, alongside these, five basins where cloth was trodden by foot. A number of vessels containing urine were found nearby. Urine was used to treat the cloth and was collected in terra-cotta amphorae which were stored in separate rooms not far from the workshop itself. The kitchen and a lavatory are reached through a door in the left-hand corner of the peristyle.

 

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This building is clearly visible from the sea as it is situated on the promontory of the hill of Pompeii and commands a wide view over the plain below. Passing along Via dell’Abbondanza to the end of Via dei Teatri we find a portico with three Ionic columns and a semicolumn which form the entrance to the Triangular Forum. The Hellenistic style arrangement of the area, which has a colonnade with 95 columns, dates back to the 2nd century B.C. This intervention created a harmonious protective curtain around the pre-existing Doric Temple and at the same time annexed this sacred area to the theatre district and the two gymnasiums as the foursided portico behind the stage of ... continue

(Apic. 8, 7, 8) Ingredients:

• 1 suckling pig
• Pepper
• Lovage (or chopped celery leaves)
• Caraway seed
• Celery seed
• Rue
• 2 drops asafoetida essence
• 3 tsp Liquamen (or soya sauce)
• 3 tbsp white wine
• 1 tbsp Passum
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp cornflour

Instructions:
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Clean the pig, sprinkle with salt and roast at 180°C for 55 minutes per kg plus 50 minutes. Whi ... continue

Love was a common topic of conversation in Pompeii. Feelings, passions, poetic love, sex, homosexuality, prostitution and so forth were all part of daily life and not a source of prejudice. The concept of “obscenity” seems to have been unknown. Love and sex were considered earthly practices of a man’s life that were encouraged by the benevolence of Venus. The thousands of examples of graffiti found on the town’s walls are unequivocal proof of what the people of Pompeii thought about love and sex.