Room f

Thomas Staub

This quite oblong room is situated to the east of the atrium, to which the doorway opens up. Due to the risk of collapse of some of the walls, this room could not be studied in every detail. The walls are built in opus africanum with a rubble filling, that in most of the lower parts consists of mainly lava stone, in the upper parts it seems more mixed. No remains of wall paintings are preserved, and it seems that already at the time of the excavation these were missing, either due to damages by the eruption or because the room served as some kind of service room and was thus not decorated at least in the last phase in the life of the house. In the rear, east part of the room a shallow niche in the north wall could be an indicator for the position of a cline. In the east wall a window opens up towards the peristyle and it seems that in this wall in an earlier stage a door connected this room to the peristyle (better visible on the peristyle side of this wall). Beam holes in the eastern part of the south wall (the corresponding part of the north wall is a modern repair) indicates the existence of an upper floor above at least a part of the room (maybe in the form of an sopalco), accessible by means of the stairs in the south-west part of the peristyle. Since the door towards the atrium is higher than the intermediate ceiling that could explain, why only a part of the room had an upper floor.