This Pompeian house has two names: that of its presumed owner, Marcus Lucretius, and the one it takes from a small painting at the entrance showing a group of women playing music. It was brought to light in the excavations of 1846, faces via Stabiana and covers more than six hundred square metres.
What to see
The entrance corridor is decorated in the fourth style, with a red dado and a blue middle band: at the centre of two walls are the little pictures, one with the women musicians and the other with Ceres. It was the first thing anyone entering saw, and the choice says something about the people who lived here.
Beyond the corridor opens the atrium, with the basin in the middle to collect rainwater; little of the wall decoration remains, only fragments of stucco and part of the lararium, the household shrine. A staircase led to the upper floor, which collapsed in the eruption.
Visiting
The house is along via Stabiana, in the central part of the excavations; you go in with the archaeological park ticket, but access to individual houses may be by rotation, so it should be checked at the entrance. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
The way the houses of Pompeii get their names is itself a document: either from the owner, deduced from a seal or an inscription, or from the image that most struck the excavators. This one has one of each kind, and neither is certain. Knowing that we gave the names ourselves, in the nineteenth century, changes the way you read a map of the site.
