Casa di Marco Lucrezio Fronto, Roman residence in Pompeii, Italy.
Casa di Marco Lucrezio Fronto is a Roman house in Pompeii featuring multiple rooms with black, red, and yellow wall paintings. The decoration includes scenes of daily life and mythological subjects that characterize the interior spaces.
Built in the 2nd century BC, the house was enlarged and decorated between the late 1st century BC and the early 1st century AD, in the Augustan period. The 62 AD earthquake damaged the garden area, forcing near-total restoration. Paintings in the Fourth Style were still unfinished when Vesuvius buried Pompeii in 79 AD. Bourbon explorations touched the house only partly; systematic digs ran in 1899, in 1900 and in 1971-1974, the last by Dutch archaeologists studying the garden layers.
The house's paintings follow the Third and Fourth Styles. In the triclinium, a panel shows Orestes killing Neoptolemus before the temple of Apollo at Delphi; the bedroom attributed to the mistress of the house has Ariadne handing the thread to Theseus and Venus at her mirror. Four electoral notices painted on the outer walls endorsed Marcus Lucretius Fronto for public office.
The main entrance is on the vicolo di Marco Lucrezio Frontone, a side street off Via di Nola, and is partly unexcavated; a service entrance opens onto the vicolo dei Gladiatori. The house covers about 460 square metres, and the floors are uneven.
Archaeologists found the remains of eight people in one room who had sought shelter here during the volcanic eruption. This sobering discovery stands in stark contrast to the fine artwork decorating the walls.
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