House of the Centenary, Ancient Roman villa in Pompeii, Italy.
The House of the Centenary is a Roman villa with two open courtyards, a columned garden court, and private bathing facilities arranged around these central spaces. The structure includes a pool and displays the typical division between family living areas and service rooms.
The villa was excavated in 1879 and dates to the second century BC when such houses were built by wealthy families. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD buried the entire city and naturally preserved the structures.
The house's modern name marks the 18th centenary of the 79 AD eruption; it was excavated in 1879. A graffito in the latrine preserves the rare word cacaturit, found also in Martial's Epigrams, while another records the slave Officiosus's escape on 6 November 15 AD. Room 43, decorated with explicit scenes, may have served as a private sex club or simply as a bedroom.
The house is numbered IX.8.3–6 in Pompeii's Regio IX, block 8. Visitors enter through the smaller atrium, which served private family and service access, while the grander atrium leads to the most decorated rooms. The triclinium was positioned so the guest of honour could see the enclosed garden, and the bakery lay in a cellar beneath the service quarters on the west side.
A private bakery was located in the cellar, showing that residents operated small businesses within their home alongside family life. Some rooms feature erotic imagery, indicating that such artistic subjects were entirely normal in Roman households.
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