The red, first of all: a Pompeian red that covers the four walls of a room, on which twenty-nine life-size figures celebrate something we have still not entirely understood. It is for this fresco that the villa outside the Herculaneum Gate is called the Villa of the Mysteries. It was discovered on 16 January 1909 and at first took the name of the landowner, Aurelio Item; Amedeo Maiuri excavated it fully between 1929 and 1930, after the State expropriated it. It was a villa of leisure from the second century BC, with hanging gardens and a view of the gulf; after the earthquake of 62 it became a farm with a wine press, and that is how the eruption found it.
What to see
The room is the triclinium at the far end of the peristyle, and the cycle reads in ten scenes: a bride combing her hair among cupids, a seated matron, a boy reading the sacred text, the offering with a silenus playing the lyre, a female satyr suckling a kid while a young woman flees in terror with her cloak billowing in the wind, a silenus offering a cup to a satyr, Dionysus slumped in Ariadne's arms, a kneeling woman uncovering a veiled object, a winged figure whipping a kneeling initiate, and finally a naked dancer with cymbals. The most widespread reading is the initiation of a bride into the mysteries of Dionysus; none is certain, and the painting, of about 70-60 BC, is among the rare great cycles of ancient painting that have come down to us.
The rest of the villa deserves as much as the room: the peristyle with sixteen columns, the atrium with its Nilotic landscapes, the tablinum with black walls in Egyptian style, the apsed veranda that looked out to sea, the baths abandoned after the earthquake and, on the farm side, the ram-headed wine press put back in its place. The bodies of those who did not flee in time were found in the villa, along with a statue of Livia dressed as a priestess.
Visiting
The villa is inside the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and included in the ticket, but it lies about four hundred metres outside the walls: you reach it on foot from the Herculaneum Gate along the Via delle Tombe, ten minutes downhill among the tombs. Between 2013 and 2015 a restoration with lasers and antibiotics removed the twentieth-century waxes and gave the frescoes back their original colours.
Our editors' tip
Come here last, in the late afternoon, when the groups have already climbed back towards the exit: the room of the Mysteries is to be looked at in silence and at length, turning on the spot, because the story is designed for whoever stands in the middle. And before leaving, look out from the veranda: the sea is far away today, but the view of the gulf is the same one the villa was built for.