On a wall of this property, along via dell'Abbondanza, there was a painted notice: to let, from the Ides of August and for five years, the bath, the shops with their mezzanines and the flats upstairs, on the estate of Julia Felix, daughter of Spurius. It is the most famous property advertisement of the ancient world, and it is the key to everything: the praedia are not a patrician house, they are an investment. After the earthquake of 62 the owner kept one wing for herself and let out the rest, baths included, which she opened to the public because the city's own were unusable.
What to see
The complex takes up a whole block and is crossed from side to side. What stays with you is the garden: a long marble water channel, the euripus, with its fountains and a portico of slender columns, and at the end a summer dining room where the couches are built of masonry and water fell in a cascade behind the diners' backs. These are the spaces of a public establishment rather than a private house, which is exactly what they had become.
Then the bath quarter, with changing room, hot room and pool, and along the street front the row of shops with the stairs that climbed to the lodgings. The finest paintings — the scenes of life in the forum, with the merchants' stalls, the open-air schools and the beggars, and the still lifes — are no longer here: they were cut away in the mid eighteenth century and are in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. This was one of the very first houses of Pompeii to be excavated, in 1755, and one of the few to be covered over again with earth and forgotten for a century.
Visiting
The praedia are in Regio II, on via dell'Abbondanza a few steps from the amphitheatre and the Porta Anfiteatro entrance; covered by the site ticket. Half an hour. Thanks to the replanted garden it is one of the shadiest areas of the site, and on hot days it is the right place to slow down. The opening of individual houses changes: check the map at the gate.
Our editors' tip
Before going in, stop on the pavement of via dell'Abbondanza and look at the outer wall: the original inscription, found in 1757, is no longer there, but that was the spot where the rental notice was read. Then go in and walk the length of the channel: in ten paces you are crossing the difference between a family house and a business run by a woman who knew how to do her sums.