HOUSE OF THE SILVER WEDDING - POMPEII

This house was named in honour of the Italian royal couple, Umberto and Margherita of Savoy, on the occasion of their silver wedding anniversary in 1893, the same year in which the house was discovered. It is located in the last side street off Via Vesuvio, next to an area which has yet to be excavated. It was built in the 2nd century B.C. and is distinguished by its high atrium with four large column which support the roof and its bedroom where the sunlight was filtered by means of veils. There are two gardens. The first is in line with the atrium and has its own private bath-house and open-air swimming pool, a large kitchen and garden and an elegant living room. The latter was decorated with a mosaic floor and a second style paintings and has four octagonal imitation porphyry columns supporting a barrel-vaulted ceiling. The ceiling of the peristyle is higher on the side which receives most sunlight in order to provide a particularly pleasant area to sit on winter days. The second garden, which is much larger and completely surrounded by a wall, has a pool in the centre and an outdoor triclinium.

 

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This large house, built in the Samnite period in the second half of the 2nd century B.C., must have belonged to Marcus Epidius Rufus or Marcus Epidius Sabinus, to judge from the number of times these two names appear in the election propaganda on the façade and on the walls of the neighbouring buildings. Outside, a two-step podium runs along the façade, an unusual architectural feature. Beyond the entrance vestibule is an atrium of Corinthian type of an imposing size, with sixteen columns with Doric capitals set around the impluvium basin in the centre. This is the most striking of the rare Corinthian atrium in Pompeii (in other words with a row of columns set along ... continue

(Apic. 9, 9) Ingredients:

• 1 kg fresh sea mussels
• 100 ml Liquamen or 1/2 tblsp salt
• 1 branch of leek, finely minced
• 1 tsp cumin
• 200 ml Passum (or honey)
• 1 tblsp minced Savory
• 500 ml white wine
• ca. 500 ml water

Instructions:
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First water mussels, and clean them. Mix together Liquamen, wine, water, Passum and spices. Boil the broth for about 20 minutes, then add mussels. Boil additional 10 minutes. Serve.

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.