Pompeii, the Villa of Diomedes and the House of the Dioscuri open to the public

Pompeii Archaeological Park expands its visitor routes through the opening of the Villa of Diomedes and the House of the Dioscuri, upon completion of safety and restoration work. With these openings, the Park initiates the return to fruition of large mansions, which in addition to adding to the visiting offer of the ancient city, provide for the enhancement of routes dedicated to people with disabilities with a walkability up to 90 percent, as in the case of the two floors of the complex of the Villa of Diomedes and the regeneration of the gardens of the House of the Dioscuri, through a new interpretation of the archaeological data and a materialization of the garden paintings of the house, today almost invisible but witnessed by the drawings of nineteenth-century visitors.

Children and adolescents with autism and cognitive disabilities from the Pompeii Rehabilitation Center visited the Villa of Diomedes. As part of an agreement promoted by the Archaeological Park with the social cooperative Il Tulipano, the children and their families are following a social agriculture path that includes the collection of fruit in the gardens of the domus, in the nursery and in the orchards of the archaeological area,starting with pomegranates and quinces and then continuing with hawthorn fruits, citrus fruits, sorbola, and the transformation with recipes taken from ancient authors such as Pliny, into juices and jams.

“These openings definitively close the restorations of the Great Pompeii Project to which the design of both domus dates, which from the beginning has been oriented in the direction of full accessibility and complete enjoyment of the monuments by all visitors, equal opportunities. Added to this is the great attention also paid to the gardens and green areas in general, integral parts of the domus,” says Director General of the Museums, Massimo Osanna. “The approach taken with the Great Pompeii Project is confirmed to have been a model of sustainability, which from the earliest projects has prioritized the value of multidisciplinarity and collaboration between different archaeological, architectural, engineering, botanical and restoration skills.”

“The task of us archaeologists is to tell the story of the exceptionality of communal life, which in Pompeii we can reconstruct thanks to unique finds, including casts of victims and everyday objects, but also to make accessible and common for all, what in ancient times was very exclusive: we open today two exceptional residences, belonging to the elite of ancient Pompeii, with a view to increasing inclusion, which is not only the physical one, of breaking down barriers, but also cultural and social. Through gardens and green spaces, we can offer experiences that allow a broader understanding of the historical reality of Pompeii and its territory. I recall that in addition to the project of redevelopment of the green areas that has seen the collaboration of children and adolescents with autism and other forms of disabilities, in the maintenance and restoration works of the gardens of the House of the Dioscuri also collaborated some young people who, thanks to the institution of probation, under an agreement between the Park and the Court of Torre Annunziata, have carried out public utility work,” adds Archaeological Park Director Gabriel Zuchtriegel. “After the important results achieved with the Great Pompeii Project, we are now committed to making the area more and more a part of our vision, and the two houses we are handing over to public use today are an exemplary expression of this.”

Villa of Diomedes

Villa di Diomede, located along the Via dei Sepolcri near the necropolis of Porta Ercolano, is among the very first buildings excavated at the Pompeii site between 1771 and 1775. The current appearance of the villa, according to the most recent studies, is the synthesis of the superimposition of different building phases, which led to the creation of a residential complex organized into three different architectural cores, rising on different terraces set at different heights, sloping down toward the sea. The first nucleus consists of the residential quarter, formed by different living rooms arranged around the upper peristyle, beyond which it was possible to reach, by means of a staircase, the lower peristyle, located at a lower elevation and composed of 17 columns on each side, which surrounded the garden, at the center of which opens a swimming pool with rectangular and curved niches, with the north side apsidal. On an axis with the pool, but facing south, is a raised terrace at the corners of which brick columns were placed. The last core consists of thelarge cryptoporticus, which serves as a substructure for the garden as well as storage. The villa, since its discovery in 1771 under the direction of Francisco La Vega, has undergone numerous restorations until today, which have modified the original architectural work. The structure appears to have been built with the use of local materials, such as Sarno limestone, tufelli, lava foam, gray tuff, yellow tuff, and bricks bonded with hydraulic lime mortar and aggregates of volcanic origin. Over time, the joints of the stones were repeatedly filled in with cement mortars, and the wooden platbands were replaced. Much of the masonry had large areas covered with weed vegetation, biological patina, erosion, missing materials, exfoliation, and salt efflorescence. The interventions of the restoration project mainly involved the consolidation of the vaults of the rooms housing decorative wall and floor elements, the restoration of wall equipment, the preservation of the layers of the restorations carried out since the 18th century, the construction of new archaeological covers to protect rooms complete with plasterwork and the decorative wall elements, the verification and replacement of existing lintels, the restoration and maintenance of metal elements, the replacement of gates and balustrades, the consolidation of wall ridges, the archaeological cleaning of interior rooms and spaces intended for the paths connecting the functions of the villa, the recovery he plaster and wall paintings. Significant intervention was reserved for the enjoyment of the Villa, in particular to allow “total” access to the disabled, equipping the visit route with an external elevator and a d platform system to overcome the obstacles of the site. The Villa’s access system was then hooked up to the larger Pompeii accessibility project, with the new arrangement of the Herculaneum Gateway and the walkway from Herculaneum Gate to Vesuvius Gate to be implemented in the coming months.

House of the Dioscuri

Excavated between 1828 and 1829, the House of the Dioscuri, in Regio VI, is one of the largest and most prestigious in Pompeii, famous for the richness of its IV-style paintings and its internal organization with large open spaces with continuous perspective references. Even today, despite the fact that many of the paintings have been detached in the past and relocated to the Archaeological Museum of Naples, one can still enjoy the willingness to create unusual decorations suited to the vast dimensions of the rooms, thus assessing the taste of one of Pompeii’s most cultured patrons. The dwelling has two atria, connected by an elegant peristyle of the rhodium type, that is, with the northern arm scenographically higher than the others, from which one can see a deep pool used for water games and overlooked by an elegant living room whose walls were originally covered with marble, a fact not common in Pompeii. Themain atrium has 12 tufa columns and sumptuous rooms open onto it, used for reception and banqueting enclosed at the back by a small garden; the secondary atrium is almost entirely occupied by service and rest rooms. The wall decoration is the work of the same workshop that worked in the nearby House of the Vettii; the most significant paintings can be seen in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, including the small paintings at the entrance with the Dioscuri Castor and Pollux, which gave the house its name and whose copies have recently been relocated in situ. The interventions on the house consisted of the construction of new, lightweight and reversible archaeological covers for the entire extension of the house, the rearrangement of some roof pitches as well as the revision of the metal structures in order to make the monument usable again. Following the completion of the construction site, work was carried out to secure the decorative wall and floor apparatuses. The House restoration project has stimulated the regeneration of the gardens of the domus, that of the peristyle and that of the Doric pseudoperistyle, with new interpretations of archaeological and archaeobotanical data from past excavations, insights and analysis of the architecture and its internal relationships, as well as the original decorative apparatuses transmitted from the sketchbook of the English scholar and traveler Sir William Gell, who witnessed the first excavations around 1830. In the gardens, the green space will ideally dialogue with the frescoes rich in decorative ribbons of botanical character, ratifying the original role of the peristyle as a private paradeisos. In order to ensure the short supply chain as a good environmental practice now peculiar to the Pompeii Archaeological Park, it was also possible for the new gardens of the House of the Dioscuri to use most of the plant species among those raised in the new Pompeian Flora Nursery at the House of Pansa. The garden of the Doric semiperistyle interprets and materializes the pictorial decoration that adorned the walls and that can still be seen today in William Gell’s sketches according to a basic idea that starts from the concept of continuity of the garden with respect to the painted decoration (the same continuity between the free columns of the “real” peristyle and the half-columns of the “fake” rear wing. The vegetal garden is the first fifth, real, made by the succession of ancient sarmentose roses climbing around the columns, followed by a strip of meadow with spontaneous blooms and where the canopy separates the bulbaceous, small fruit-bearing trees raised in cups between the broken lines of the wooden gates that accompany the gaze toward the row of small cypresses and the paintings behind. The peristyle garden fits into the neo-pictorial current of the contemporary landscape, with references to historicism, characteristic of Pompeian gardens created in the 20th century. The garden presents a well-defined and historicized design that harks back to the style of other nearby domus gardens such as that of the Golden Cupids with a choice of species intended to recall the opulence and luxury of the patrician home: Ars topiaria with the classic hedge of Ruscus very low, avoiding covering vanishing points and perspective on the surrounding wall frescoes and the large pool in the opposite position; elements that draw verticality by accompanying the colonnade with topiary forms of Yew and Cypress, elegant non-invasive subtle to guarantee the principle of balance. Within the beds drawn by the hedge are blooms of Rose, Iris, Daffodils for spring, bluebells and lavender for summer with two topiary structures made of river reeds to support Lonicera caprifolium.

Pompeii, the Villa of Diomedes and the House of the Dioscuri open to the public

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