Alae over here, look what is happened to the Tablinum, the
tablinum is gone essentially, all it consists of is a couple
of bla-, plasters that are located right here and I will
show them to you in a moment, because its well preserved.
Plasters here,
so the Tablinum has essentially disappeared it's become a kind of
passage way from the core of the house in to the garden
and it is a peristyle garden surrounded by columns as you can
see and you can see how important that peristyle garden has become.
This family has decided to decrease their other
space in order to have this stupendously large
garden here and they have also put a very large dining hall Triclinium up
here, that opens off the peristyle and it has a much bigger opening.
So that they could clearly dine and get views of this of
this garden, this peristyle garden of
which they were obviously incredibly proud.
so, some, some major changes, there. Now this particular house, oh, I did
want to say, though, despite those changes, the house is still
very enclosed and very very plain and stark from the outside.
This is a restored view of what we believe the outside looked like.
So, geometrically-ordered cubic, as you can see.
Just one entranceway, possibly a few small windows, possibly not.
And then you can see the the compluvium and the peristyle port.
But otherwise, very much
enclosed like the earlier domus italica.
Not much change with regard to how the exterior of the building is treated.
This, again, is one of the reasons everyone
flocks to this house, is it's very well preserved.
There's been some restoration work, of course but it
really, this is one of those must-sees because it
really gives you as good of a sense as
anything of what these houses looked like in antiquity.
We have obviously entered into,
we've come through the fauces, We are standing in the atrium.
We can see the pool or impluvium here.
We can see the compluvium, very well preserved up above.
I think it's probably the best preserved compluvium that we have or close to it.
And you can see that there were little anti-fixes added
in terracotta and stuff as decoration up at the top.
As we're standing here we look back through what was
once the tablinum and now is basically a
point of transition, a passageway from the atrium to
the most important part of the house from
the point of view of these patrons, the garden.
So you're looking through, you see these great piers on
either side that are all that's left of the tablinum.
You look through that and you see the garden.
The garden has its columns surrounding it.
The walls are painted, of that, of that garden.
All a very lively and wonderful interior and what also
comes, becomes very clear in looking at this particular view
is something that we've already discussed and that is the
importance in the minds of the Romans, of vista or panorama.
Of great views that you can see from one part of a building to another.
Remember the sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur at Terracina,
and all of those wonderful lateral and, and
axial entrances and exits where there were all kinds of interesting light effects.
We see the same sort of thing here.
The idea is to pass from a particularly well lighted area outside into
a darker area, the fauces, then a little bit more light added to the
system though the compluvium and then a whole host of light that you can
see in the distance through the open
because of the open peristyle so dark,light,dark,light
as progression of space, this progression of light
through this structure a a very typical Roman
thing to do and the other other thing
of course is the emphasis on axiality, the this
movement through a structure in a very axial
way, the garden here as it looks today
would have been of course more beautiful in
antiquity when it would have been in better shape.
But nonetheless this gives you, it's a bit overgrown now and
so on, but it gives you some sense of what it would have looked like.
With the greenery in the garden surrounded by the columns with you know,
with, with garden furniture, a little
fountains, little marble fountains and the like.
And with the walls that paintings are not in very good
shape today, but imagine they are more vibrant and I'm going to show
you examples of that on Thursday and next week, of some of
the paintings that are in better condition, and how vibrant this would
have been with those paintings.
Look also at the columns because you can see, we'll
see that some of these columns are made out of stone.
Some of them are made out of those those tiles,
those that look like bricks that I've shown you before.
But in all cases they were stuccoed over white.
Why were they stuccoed over white? To make them look like Greek marble.
So once again this Helenization of Roman domestic
architecture, this attempt to make these things look as Greek as possible.
Neal, you asked about the kitchen.
Well, this is our best preserved kitchen from Pompeii.
It's really quite amazing.
There's a stove, and the pots and pans that were clearly still sitting on the,
