Room 16h

Henrik Boman & Monika Nilsson

Room 16h has a large door facing Via del Vesuvio, and a rear door to room b (atrium), and it is identified as a taberna. The preserved cocciopesto floor shows no traces of installations. The east wall is completely destroyed, while the north and west walls are heavily restored.

As with room 14i, there is a line of wall plaster preserved in the pavement in front of the large door, indicating that the wall facing Via del Vesuvio was originally closed.

Damage during WW II
The outer walls of V 1,15 and 16h were severely damaged in the aerial bombing of 16 September 1943 (see pre-war photo in García y García 2006, fig. 92). Further damage was caused by the 1980 earthquake, as the photo of the S wall of V 1,14 in PPM shows (see PPM III, 534, fig. 2.). A bomb fell in V 1,17, which presumably also caused damage to the walls of V 1,16.

The original cubic capitals over doorway V 1,15 were in the postwar, or post earthquake, reconstruction placed above doorway 16, which, no doubt, signifies the extent of the damages caused by the bombing (Boman & Nilsson 2006, 146; García y García 2006, fig. 92).