The name has nothing to do with the Romans: the house was excavated in 1893, the year the king and queen of Italy were celebrating their silver wedding, and the archaeologists named it after them. It is a habit of Pompeii, where houses carry the names of illustrious visitors and anniversaries, because we almost never know what the owners were really called.
What to see
The atrium is one of the largest in the city and has four tall Corinthian columns holding up the roof: you step in and find yourself in a space fit for a public building, not a private house. Beside it is the exedra with yellow walls and rooms painted in the second style, that is with false architecture that opens the wall into depth.
There are two gardens: a large one with a basin and the triclinium for eating outdoors, the other with a private bath suite, an open-air pool, the kitchen and a room with a mosaic floor and a barrel vault held up by columns painted in imitation of porphyry. The house was built in the Samnite period and modernised under Augustus.
Visiting
The house is in Regio V, at the far end of via Vesuvio, near the part of the site not yet excavated; the visit is covered by the site ticket, but the opening of individual houses varies: check the map at the gate. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
Stand in the middle of the atrium among the four columns and look up at the opening in the roof: light and rain came in through there, and the whole house is organised around that hole. Then go through to the garden with the pool: in few houses in Pompeii do you see so clearly the jump between the part for show and the part where people actually lived.
