Pompeii tours

An elegant house of the Samnite age, it is decorated, however, in the Fourth Style. Architecturally magnificent is the peristyle, which opens out from one of the sides of the house. There is a colonnade which surrounds a large garden pool, with a fountain and statuettes. On the eastern side there are three rooms, the centre one with the layout of a large, luxurious reception room, that is with an internal colonnade in the Hellenistic style, known as ‘oecus corinthius’. In the north eastern corner there is another tri-clinum, whose elegant decoration is badly preserved. This is also an imposing house of the Samnite period, with a double’ atrium that is with a main atrium tetrastyle and a second, Tuscan atrium. Above ali noteworthy, is the group of rooms used as luxurious reception rooms. The centrai room which, with its internal colonnade oecus corinthius is like that of the House of Meleager, and the nearby cubicle, both contain the most beautiful examples of pictorial decorations of the Second Style, with architectural motives and designs. The adjoining room is inlaid with a picture in mosaic of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. The part of the house to the west is rather rustie in style, containing, apart from ovens and mills, a private bath.