The villa of Diomedes was one of the first buildings in Pompeii to be excavated, between 1771 and 1774, when archaeology did not yet exist as a trade. It stands outside the walls, just past Porta Ercolano, and for a whole century it was the obligatory stop for travellers on the Grand Tour: they arrived by carriage, went in here and took the story home with them.
What to see
It is a large suburban villa, built on several levels following the slope: the formal rooms above, the portico onto the garden, and below the vaulted cellars with their corridors. The materials are local, tuffs and limestones of the area bound with mortar, and it is a good example of how people built here before the eruption.
In the cellars, during the excavation, were found the remains of a group of people who had taken shelter there during the eruption, and near an exit those of a man with a key in his hand. The ash had preserved the imprint of the bodies, and that detail struck nineteenth-century writers so hard that it entered literature. The villa was restored and reopened to the public in 2022.
Visiting
The villa is just outside Porta Ercolano, along the street of the tombs, ten minutes from the centre of the site; the visit is covered by the Pompeii ticket, but the opening of individual houses changes: check the map at the gate. Twenty minutes.
Our editors' tip
On the way out, cross the road and look for the tomb facing the entrance: it is the one the villa's name comes from, because it carried the memory of a freedman called Diomedes. We do not know the owner of this house, and the name we have used for two and a half centuries is probably wrong.