North Wall

A. Karivieri & R. Forsell

DESCRIPTION

The wall was built in opus incertum and consists of Sarno limestone, yellow tufa, cruma and lava, some bricks, one spolia. The limestone and cruma stones above lava stones in the upper W part of wall, are rectangular blocks. In the E part there is a refilled hole of funnelers rebuilt in limestone, some cruma and lava.

In the W part of the wall, there is a door opening connecting the room s with the N portico of the peristyle. The E doorpost of the door opening is built with opus mixtum (see separate sheet for N door opening). The wall-plaster covers the W part of the wall up till 3.15 m, in the E part up till 1.18 m. The decorative scheme, where preserved, has well preserved colour remains, yellow, white, green, light blue.

Wall-plaster

Upper zone
Upper zone is divided from the main zone with a yellow horizontal band. In the NW edge there is a vertical red band. 31 cm east of the corner, there is a white vertical band, 2.5 cm wide. Between this white band and the red edge there are two horizontal bands with 25 cm distance between the upper borders of each band (5 cm wide). Four similar systems with horizontal and vertical bands can be seen in centre of the wall, starting from the left vertical red band flanking the central candelabrum. Between these two decorative schemes, in the centre of the upper zone, small remains of green colour can be discerned.

Main zone
The main zone is divided into two main fields east of the door opening. Each zone has a panel at its centre. The panels are framed from inside and out with first a red line 1 cm wide. Outside of this red line is a yellow decorative band. On both sides of the frames there are red lines stretching from the top of the dado up till the upper zone. These lines on either side of the frames constitute the sides of rectangular “bases” on which yellow candelabra are standing. It seems that even the candelabrum motifs continue to the upper zone (see photos and a separate sketch).

Dado
The red dado has horizontal red and yellow stripes in the upper border, 6 cm high.
The red dado has vegetal motifs, girlands and dolphins. In the W part of the dado, a vertical panel is decorated with vegetal motif with white and blue elongated leaves. In the E part of the wall, below a yellow diagonal double line with pendants, there are two dolphins painted in white and blue-green colour.  In the NE corner of the dado there is a square framed by a bluegreen band with white edges, decorated with a white spiral to which the yellow diagonal double line is attached. Inside the framed square there is a yellow flower. In the central part of the dado, there is a vertical panel decorated with vegetal motif with white, yellow and blue elongated leaves.

State of preservation
The central part of painted wall-plaster in the dado is missing. In the E part there is a refilled hole of funnelers, and the upper part of the part has been reconstructed to a higher level to support a modern roof after 2004.