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| The outside garden behind the house |
In part 3 of our walk through the unburied ancient Italian city of Pompeii, we got to see inside the home of a wealthy family. We'll take you inside what is now called the
"MENANDER HOUSE." Between the amazing gardens, the perfectly preserved wall paintings and the Cat's Eye Marble Flooring, this was amazing!
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| Rob's sketch of the layout of the house |
MY SKETCH OF THE HOUSE - As we walked through the Menander house, I (Rob) sketched the layout because it's hard to understand all of the facets of the house from individual photos. It was quite a layout.
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| Painting of Meander |
WHY CALLED MENANDER HOUSE? - Archaeologists gave that name to this wealthy house because inside was a painting of the 6th Century BC Greek Poet Menander sitting on a stool. They speculate that this painting was done to show that the owner was cultured.
WHOSE HOUSE WAS IT? The house belonged to the Poppei family and was built starting in the 3rd century B.C.
SILVER FOUND IN THE HOUSE - This house is also known as the "house of the silverware" because of the collection of pieces found in a chest in the cellars of the house. There were 118 pieces of silver as well as numerous others made of
gold and coins.
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| Cat's Eye Marble Chip Flooring |
OUTSIDE GARDENS - A large square garden was actually in the middle of the house. All of the rooms were built around the garden, which was quite elaborate (in these wealthy houses).
WHAT IS CAT'S EYE MARBLE CHIP FLOORING? - This decorative marble floor was amazingly intact after all the ash was cleared from the home. It had reflective properties, too. When they cast the concrete for the floors, they embedded marble chips. At night, the torch light reflected off the marble chips. It worked so well inside they embedded polished marble in concrete of the streets.
PAINTED WALLS! Think about this - 1,938 years later, some of the
walls in the Menander house still held onto their yellowish color!
Amazing.
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| Painted walls still retain some color! |
ILIAD MURAL - The rooms to the left of the entrance contain
paintings showing scenes taken from Episodes of the Iliad.
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| Iliad Mural |
ANCIENT BATHROOMS! - Although bathrooms didn't exist in the middle ages (1100 to 1400 A.D. in Italy) because they were phased out (for some stupid reason), they certainly did in ancient Pompeii. The western
area of the house is actually occupied by the quarters set aside for use as
bathrooms!
OTHER DETAILS - There were designs carved on different ceilings, there were paintings on various walls and there were mosaic tile floors still in many of the rooms.
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| detailed mosaic floor |
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| Detailed carving on ceiling |
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| Another mosaic floor |
NEXT: THE INTERESTING STREETS OF POMPEII
