POMPEII -- The recent opening to the public of six restored houses in Pompeii, some of which have notable frescoes and mosaics, heralds a new era.  All were damaged when nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, some had been partially excavated early in the past century but previously none were accessible.

 Good management, as well as huge funds (159 million euros, largely from the European Union), are driving the Great Pompeii Project launched by the Italian government late in 2012.  As a result of the good management, each of the six buildings  was restored on schedule and within the set budget.  

 The Project entails consolidation of all the Pompeii terrain and buildings as well as the restoration of their decorations.   The archeological area of Pompeii is 66 hectares of which 45 have been excavated and 29 opened to the public.  There are 1500 buildings between homes and public structures; 40 are being restored at the moment.

 Five of the six which have just been opened are on Abundance Street and give an insight into a provincial town which was a busy commercial centre as well as being a resort for the wealthy  during the two year reign of Emperor Titus.  He completed the Colosseum in Rome, and was generous to those who survived the eruption of Vesuvius which released an estimated 100,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb.

 The largest restored building is  the laundry of Stephanus where fabrics were washed and dyed. The pool under a roof opening is particularly spacious and the red-painted walls of a large room have depictions of mythological heroes.

 Nearby is the house of Pasquius Proculus, a prominent citizen, whose nucleus dates from the second century B.C.  It has handsome floor mosaics of birds and other animals as well as of chained guard dogs at the entrance with the warning Cave Canem ('Beware the dog') which have been copied for gates worldwide. In the narrow flanking house of Fabius Amandio, is an altar for the household gods at the centre of a large room for family gatherings. A small internal garden provided light for all the rooms as  there were no windows. 

 Sacerdos  Amandus’s house has a stairway to the workshop of a maker of wax tablets which were found in quantities under the collapsed roof after the Vesuvius eruption. Electoral propaganda from 79 AD covers an external wall. 

 The name of the fifth house- the Criptoportico- derives from its long corridor, with openings on one side, which has traces of frescos inspired by Homer’s Iliad.   As well as thermal baths and an ample garden, it has a  decorated living room but at the time of the eruption this once sumptuous house had declined into a deposit for amphoras of wine.   Excavations in its garden in 1914 brought to light a group of ten persons, and another group of six, caught in death as if frozen by the eruption.  Casts of these and other victims are now displayed in the Pompeii amphitheatre.   This home was damaged by Allied air raids in 1943.

 The sixth and most extensive home, in an alley off Abundance Street, is thought to have been of a rich merchant but its name Efebe (Youth) derives from a statue which stood in its garden.  Begun in the 3rd century BC, it incorporates several houses including one which has decorations of figures familiar from the poet Ovid, such as Narcissus and Apollo. Across a courtyard is a dining room with a space alongside where meals were prepared.  A larger building  has a richly decorated room  flanked by a huge, colorful, vivid portrait of the ancestral Roman gods, Venus with Mars. It looks down on a garden with a niche which contained the bronze statue of a youth, now in the Naples Archaeological Museum.  It would be more at home in its original setting. The garden couches where guests reclined are decorated by erotic scenes and others set by a river, allegedly the Nile.

 There are about 1400 other building to be restored including large ones, such as the temple of Iside, many of whose Egyptian-style decorations have been saved, so the new crew reviving Pompeii have a formidable task.  But there is consolation in the increase of tourists from 2.6 million in 2014 to 3,2 million in 2015.

 The Pompeii Project has inaugurated thematic and night time visits and have constructed a large- scale model of the imperial Roman town before  burning stones and cinders descended on it. Even before the new crew moved in, there were over a thousand casts of corpses based on their imprint in the ash falling from the sky.  It makes one look again across green fields at Vesuvius which looms against the near horizon. In its last eruption in 1944 about 80 US bombers were destroyed on a nearby airfield. The surrounding area is the world’s most densely populated near an active volcano.

See Pompeii while it lasts.

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