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On Wednesday we'd been everywhere else (we visited Boscoreale on Tuesday afternoon, but although the museum there is very modern and nicely presented, the villa rustica there was closed to the public, so no pictures, alas), so we went for a last look round Pompeii.
This is the view from our hotel room out towards Stabiae. Sorrento is somewhere off behind the hills, I think. I liked the mist in the valley.
Since we got into Pompeii before the big crowds arrived we took the opportunity to look at the Lupanare without several dozen other people crowding in with us. I hope they had some cushions or something to make the bed rather more comfy than it looks...
Then we went for another pootle round some of the more obscure bits and found this rather nice mosaic doggie.
And these chaps too.
This looks to have been a very posh house, judging by the multi-columned impluvium.
A little face set into at the wall (House of the Cithara Player)
House of P. Casca Longus. Most houses had these pipe-like objects, which I think were the access to the cistern where the water collected via the impluvium was stored. This was the most ornate of the ones we saw.
House of P. Casca Longus, wall painting.
House of P. Casca Longus, table base. Mr P.C. Longus appears to have had a bit of a thing for lions, by the look of it.
Stucco detail from the Lararium of Achilles, from the house of that name.
Same house, painting of a headless heffalump. Which, in fairness, probably wasn't originally headless.
Another mosaic doggie - it's a bit dusty, but the details picked out in red are rather nice.
Painted lararium in a street cafe. The snakes on the bottom are good luck symbols apparently. I'm sensing a pattern here…
The Porta Nocera. The gate looks oddly tall, but that's because the street level is lower now than it was when the gate was built.
Some tombs and statues from the Porta Nocera necropolis. All tombs had to be outside the city walls, probably partly for sanitary reasons, but also in order that travellers might see the tombs and honour the dead.
A vineyard, laid out as it would have been in Roman times. They make and sell wine from the grapes too.
This is the view from our hotel room out towards Stabiae. Sorrento is somewhere off behind the hills, I think. I liked the mist in the valley.
Since we got into Pompeii before the big crowds arrived we took the opportunity to look at the Lupanare without several dozen other people crowding in with us. I hope they had some cushions or something to make the bed rather more comfy than it looks...
Then we went for another pootle round some of the more obscure bits and found this rather nice mosaic doggie.
And these chaps too.
This looks to have been a very posh house, judging by the multi-columned impluvium.
A little face set into at the wall (House of the Cithara Player)
House of P. Casca Longus. Most houses had these pipe-like objects, which I think were the access to the cistern where the water collected via the impluvium was stored. This was the most ornate of the ones we saw.
House of P. Casca Longus, wall painting.
House of P. Casca Longus, table base. Mr P.C. Longus appears to have had a bit of a thing for lions, by the look of it.
Stucco detail from the Lararium of Achilles, from the house of that name.
Same house, painting of a headless heffalump. Which, in fairness, probably wasn't originally headless.
Another mosaic doggie - it's a bit dusty, but the details picked out in red are rather nice.
Painted lararium in a street cafe. The snakes on the bottom are good luck symbols apparently. I'm sensing a pattern here…
The Porta Nocera. The gate looks oddly tall, but that's because the street level is lower now than it was when the gate was built.
Some tombs and statues from the Porta Nocera necropolis. All tombs had to be outside the city walls, probably partly for sanitary reasons, but also in order that travellers might see the tombs and honour the dead.
A vineyard, laid out as it would have been in Roman times. They make and sell wine from the grapes too.
amused
They do say that if you have stone lions on your gate posts, then it means the inhabitants of the house are up for a bit of "swinging", goodness only knows what it means when you have them for table legs. Confirming everything you ever were told about the ancient Pompeii-ans really.
I choose firmly to believe that the Romans used an entirely different iconography in this regard, because otherwise the lions on the tomb don't bear thinking about....
There were lots of modern signs urging visitors to avoid contact with the stray dogs in Pompeii - but all the "stray" dogs seemed to have collars and nametags, so I dunno what that was about. Maybe they keep them to keep the rats down or something.
I know of the famous "cave canem" one but wondered if these were just mosaics without the writing as, if the mosaics were in common usage, the writing probably wasn't necessary.