South Wall

A. Karivieri & R. Forsell

DESCRIPTION

The wall was built of limestone, lava, cruma, some spolia (wall-plaster). In the door opening there are limestone and grey tufa blocks. In the upper part, the wall has been reconstructed with limestone, lava, cruma and mortar.

There is no real threshold in the door opening, but in the W edge there is a broken threshold piece (27 x 17 cm) in Apennine limestone with partial cutting for door setting and another polished marble slab (27 cm x 7 cm preserved width) in E-W direction under the E doorpost. Inside the E doorpost, the plaster ends 3 cm S of the NE corner. Iron clamp in the E doorpost: 4 cm height, 14 cm from E corner. The door opening had a frame in different material.

Wall-plaster
The decorative design of the wall painting is asymmetric, as it does not continue until the door opening. The wall painting was painted above the cocciopesto floor against the S floor (see photo). There are remains of an earlier red wallpainting in SE corner (see photo).
The dado is painted separately from the main zone.
The wall-plaster coating ends 20 cm E of the door opening.

Upper zone
The upper zone has architectural decoration in red and yellow.

Main zone
Main zone: two yellow panels are divided by a panel that consists of a red rectangle in the lower part and the upper part on this panel seems to have been black. In the E corner the yellow panel has a green or blue border (5 cm wide), and a white horizontal decorative band (5 cm wide), 6 cm above the dado.

Dado
The dado decoration is not well preserved. For dado decoration, see documentation for N wall in room r. The dado decoration is asymmetric.

State of preservation
The upper part of the wall is reconstructed. Large part of the wall-plaster is missing.