House of the Silver Wedding
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The House of the Silver Wedding is the name given to the archaeological remains of a Roman house in
Pompeii Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried ...
, buried in the ash from the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The house was excavated in 1893 and was named after the silver wedding anniversary of Umberto and Margherita of Savoy, which took place in that year.


Description

The house is in the last side street off Via Vesuvio, next to an as-yet unexcavated part of the site. Built sometime around 300 BC and renovated in the early 1st century AD, it was the
domus In Ancient Rome, the ''domus'' (plural ''domūs'', genitive ''domūs'' or ''domī'') was the type of town house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras. It was found in almost all the ma ...
of a wealthy resident. Its architecture is classical and it bears fine decoration such as the atrium which has four tall Corinthian columns supporting the roof, and an elegantly ornamented
exedra An exedra (plural: exedras or exedrae) is a semicircular architectural recess or platform, sometimes crowned by a semi-dome, and either set into a building's façade or free-standing. The original Greek sense (''ἐξέδρα'', a seat out of d ...
and is generally considered to be the finest tetrastyle atrium in the whole city, with its compluviate roof with palmette antefixes and lion-headed gutter spouts. There are two gardens: the largest with a central pool and a triclinium; the other with a bath-house, open-air swimming pool, kitchen, and a living room that has a mosaic floor, wall paintings and a barrel-vaulted ceiling supported by four octagonal columns decorated in imitation of porphyry.


References


Further reading

* S {{Rome-stub