Italy Trip Sept 2025 - Part 9 Pompeii (3)

I'm not sure where this picture was taken - it might have been in the House of the Vettii actually, but it's worth sharing no matter where it was located!

This is likely to be another bakery, with the oven at the back and millstones there on the left.

House of Leda

This house is so named due to a fresco (below) discovered of 'Leda and the Swan'; Leda being the famous queen of Sparta and Zeus who had been transformed into a swan. Click on the photo to see it larger and sharper.

On a personal note, those columns of florals, especially the one in the foreground right is a reminder of how we have not changed a lot in 2000 years - I know it's not in fashion right now but who remembers floral stencils around doorways and across the tops of walls some 30 odd years ago? 😁 

We did have a photo of Priapus, the god of fertility, and his unfeasibly large phallus after all (fans of Viz comic from the 80s/90s will understand that joke reference!). I had read that this house also had a fresco of him weighing his overly large penis on a weighing scale. Click on the photo to view larger, if you wish! 😀

House of Sirico

This was the house of Publius Vedius Sirico, known due to the discovery of a bronze ring seal bearing his name, along with other things which confirmed he was an important man in political and commercial life in Pompeii.

The house was originally two that over time were made into one dwelling. and there were two courtyards with basins in the centre as seen in the two photos below.

Casts of bodies found in this house

The people who died at Pompeii were not subjected to such intense heat as at Herculaneum, and they died sometimes with their clothes intact. They were covered in ash and pumice, which hardened to stone over time and when the area was excavated, the space where the body once was left an imprint in the rock. Impressions of the bodies have been made by putting liquid plaster inside the rock cavity then chipping off the rock, leaving the outline of the people who died. Some still have their clothing visible in the plaster impression. As they wore mostly woollen clothing, it doesn't burn easily. Over 1,000 victims have been found at Pompeii. There's an article about it with photos here if it interests you, but there's enough information in this info panel in the photo below as well.

Casts of what looks like two bodies, maybe three? Not sure these are the ones referred to above in the description.

This was the Great Exedra, a room used for banqueting.

An oven, also a part of the House of Sirico.

We then went to look at the theatre, the Odeon, which was the smaller of two theatres in this area. This would have been a roofed building originally.

The Quadriporticum originally served as a covered passage behind the theatre for spectators to use during intervals between shows. After the earthquake of 62AD its function changed and became the place where gladiators used to exercise in, and also contained barracks for them. This is a rare example of how Romans reused and repurposed buildings over time.

The Temple of Isis - one of the first discoveries during the excavation of Pompeii in 1764. This is actually the second structure as the original was damaged during the earthquake of 62AD.

House of the Wild Boar - currently closed so K took this picture through the locked gate. If you click on the photo you'll see the mosaic better. It looks more like a wolf than a boar really, although this animal does have tusks.

Palestra dei Iuvenes - a gymnasium for young men, but again closed and the photo of the mosaic in the entrance hall was taken through a gate.

And back on the main road coming towards the Forum area again. Overall we walked around a lot of the western side but really, considering the size of the town, we only saw a small amount of what there is to see! However after about 4 hours in the heat and humidity, we felt that was enough so called it a day mid afternoon.

And that, my friends, is the last of our photos of Pompeii, indeed the last of anything Roman for the rest of our trip!  From your comments, it seems I'm not the only person who finds Roman history and culture fascinating. Thank you.

Italy Trip Sept 2025 - Part 8 Pompeii (2)

The House of the Vettii

This house was owned by two former slaves, Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus, who had somehow made their fortune in the wine trade after becoming Freedmen. It was originally excavated in the late 1800s and wax was painted over the frescoes in an attempt to preserve them, which proved difficult to remove. We were lucky to see this house as it was only opened to tourists in 2023 after two decades of restoration work! It is absolutely full of frescoes and just astonishing. Due to so many photos between K and me I have made this whole post about this house, and will finish off Pompeii in the next post.

There was a model showing the layout of the house which is always useful - there were so many rooms here but many rooms in Roman houses were very small. Every room was painted - different styles in different rooms, just like how we might decorate our houses two thousand years later! Many of the main pictures were of mythological stories and it is the same in all the houses we saw.

Dionysus and Ariadne watching a fight between Eros and Pan.

The room that the above picture is in.

This painting depicts Cyparissus, Apollo's lover, who was turned into a cypress tree after killing Apollo's beloved stag.

A Lararium - a shrine to the gods of the household are found in many Pompeiian households. Here, the lararium imitates the form of a temple. Columns support a pediment, and frame a central painting. Two dancing lares (guardians of the family, who protect the household from external threats) hold raised drinking horns. They are positioned on either side of the genius (who represents the spirit of the male head of the household), who is dressed in a toga and making a sacrifice. Beneath them all is a serpent. Snakes are often depicted in lararia, and were considered guardian spirits of the family. Text taken from this web page.

If you read this text, you will see at the end that it mentions a slave girl selling herself to clients for the sum of two asses (coins).

And this is the room in question with erotic paintings on the wall!

An inscription on a wall refers to a 'Greek woman of pleasant manners' who was paid two copper coins. We couldn't actually enter this room, just look from the doorway, so we didn't see the actual graffiti.

This is the atrium and talking of erotic, I missed completely in this room, because I didn't know at the time that it was there, a picture of the god of fertility, Priapus, with his gigantic penis resting on a weighing scale! Apparently it used to be covered up back in the Victorian times when they were prudish about such things. Erotic art was common in Pompeii however.

Warships in a naval battle.

If you look at the next few pictures larger, you will see several faces peeking over the walls. Not sure what they signify. The main painting is the 'Punishment of Ixion'.

Courtyard with peristyle (pillars with roof over). Still more frescoes!

A different style in this room which is very red with black friezes.

Hercules killing a serpent.

Hope you enjoyed this tour around this incredible house full of amazing works of art! These kind of paintings are not my thing at all; mythological creatures and religious paintings normally bore the pants off me as I'm a nature and landscape art loving person, but to see art like this in situ from nearly 2,000 years ago is just mind blowing!

Springtime at home

Time for a break from my travels and write a bit about what's going on at home! We had a lovely few days of sunshine and even two days with temps around 25C, which was a real treat. Two days later on Sunday and it was wet, windy and 9C. I guess that's April for you.

Keith has planted out my Olive tree (at long last) and made a nice wooden surround for it, and I also found a pretty lime green Smoke Bush at the garden centre so he's planted that out too with the same kind of surround. In the distance he is attacking my new (teeny tiny) veg bed! We needed to add a bit of interest to this area since the fruit trees had to go, yet the Olive can be pruned to keep it from getting too large as we don't want the insurance company complaining about another tree too close to the house!

Not sure why the photo is at this angle. I was trying out my new phone camera (actually no different really from the previous one, both Motorolas). Think the phone or my finger slipped or something. Anyway you can see some of my herb bed, which has become rather overgrown and woody, well some of the plants anyway. Where the hedge is we used to see all the neighbour’s pool over it, which shows how much the Oleanders have grown in six years! There’s even a ‘rogue’ tree which appeared above the hedge a few years ago. I haven’t tried to ID it yet, something I keep forgetting about. I guess a seed was dropped in some sparrow poop!

This is my new veg bed. It's just 1 x 3 meters and should be fine as all I really want is enough space for one courgette, three cherry tomatoes and some salad, spring onions and herbs. If I find I need more space then he'll do me another bed the same size parallel. He's gone to a lot of trouble making these nice surrounds and treating the wood and varnishing it.

The big problem unfortunately is very heavy clay soil, which has sat under gravel and geotextile for goodness knows how many years and was probably all compacted by diggers when the house was being built about 37 years ago. What you see here is horrible clumps after K has tried to 'dig' over the patch! Since then it has been left to dry out and he has managed to reduce the size of the clumps and I have even put on my wellies and walked up and down, stomping away trying to break up the hard lumps. 

On top we have added what's left of our homemade compost, lots of spent compost from all the pots of dead plants that were killed this winter by the sudden freeze, and some gravel then on top has gone three sacks of bought potting compost. Another three sacks and it should be about right. I do need to be able to make a drill to sow seed! In a few years of this stuff mixing together then hopefully the structure wll be much improved, after all my herb bed was like this to start with and is miles better now.

Honestly, I go from the sublime to the ridiculous. My last potager was dry sandy free draining soil which needed lots of watering, and this is the total opposite!

My new Smoke Bush (Cotinus coggygria) called ‘Golden Lady’. I just love them in this colour and they turn lovely orange in the autumn too.

I went for a walk along the road which runs along the ridge here looking out over the valley. At the moment it is Lady Orchid (Orchis purpurea) season and there are loads of them in this area - just sadly none in my garden!

I thought that this first one might be a hybrid but I have been assured by several people who know their stuff that it is just another Lady Orchid, and that they can vary a lot, much like so many other orchids. It makes identifying them really hard!

Now this one I knew was a Lady Orchid, as they mostly look like this.

I've been told it's possible this one is a hybrid, i.e. a cross between two orchids, in this case Lady Orchid and unknown. I have found Lady x Military Orchids in this part of my local patch before so who knows? I certainly dont!

This is looking towards the Pyrenees on the right and the Corbieres on the left. Where that bare patch is on the hillside is because people/builders/farmers have been dumping spoil over the side of the hill, which peeves me no end. And because of this, with all the rain we had in January and February, it just ran off that bare patch and pooled in the field below, killing off the crop and leaving that bare white chalky patch. I'm quite surprised that some of the hillside didn't collapse into the field below.

Looking back in the other direction, towards the Montagne Noir. We used to walk down this track during Covid as we were restricted to 1km from home, and called that lone tree the 'Lollipop Tree'. The track comes to an end at a field at the bottom but you can walk along the edge of the field, then there is another only used by animals track to follow, which joins another proper walking route. At least it gave us a bit of choice when it came to where we could walk during those times and gave us a loop walk to do. Thank goodness that time is over!

One of the Star of Bethlehem family, Ornithogalum divergens, flowering in the grass verge.

The initial white blossom period is over (for now, until the Robinia starts flowering) and Lilac is flowering everywhere, both in gardens and also in the wild. The scent whilst I was standing here was really lovely, due I expect to the heat. The bare fields will mostly be sunflowers later on. 💛

Another tree in bloom right now is the Judas Tree (Cercis siliquastrum) which is mostly growing in gardens but also here and there in the wild - also along the banks of the motorway on our way to the coast, which is a nice sight. This one was just growing in a hedgerow.

Looking back towards home with my house on the left and the top of the old part of the village in the distance.

I have my usual orchid lawn at this time of the year - the Early Spider and Sombre Bee Orchids are going over, whereas the Yellow Bee Orchids (Ophrys lutea) below are just popping up. There will be more Early Spiders later as I have a whole patch of them that come up later in the back garden.

Finally, my new Wisteria floribunda, which I bought to replace the previous climber that never came to anything. I was going to replace it two years ago but when we went to bury Hallie here we discovered that the Bignone (Campsis radicans) that we thought was dead had started sprouting. So I potted it up but it still never came to anything, and died again - properly this time - yet it's a vigorous climber for everyone else! So let's hope in a few years I will have a lovely display of Wisteria over this arch as it's been bare for too long!

I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into springtime in our neck of the woods. At least there are a few butterflies around now on the warm days and plenty of bees, and even bees already going into my bee hotel! I haven't seen a Swallow yet though....