Room b
Description
Thomas Staub
Courtyard b is the central room of the house, which probably also served as a light shaft for the adjoining rooms. The room is not formed as a traditional atrium with a centrally placed impluvium but instead shows a water basin in its north-east corner, probably to catch the pluvial waters (Overbeck & Mau, 1884, p.271). The floor in this room is mostly destroyed, only faint remains directly in front of the basin show remains of coccio-pesto. Also the layers underneath the height of the floor level are highly disturbed, whether due to modern activity or a collapsed under ground structure remains unclear (see comments below). To the south of the basin the lower part of a supposed staircase are reconstructed. If the structure here indeed was a staircase leading to the upper floor remains unsure, since these stairs would only lead to a upper floor above room f, but no other rooms could have been reached from there onwards. That would only have been possible, if either a passage way was built around the upper parts of the south and west wall of this courtyard or if the upper floor above taberna V 1,29 had belonged to our house and thus enabled a passageway through that room towards the upper floors above the western and northern parts of the house. This solutions is contradicted by the closed upper part of the wall separating V 1,29 from our house, were the cork model in the National Museum in Naples even shows more preserved wall plaster in the height relevant for a hypothetical doorway (for further discussions see comments below).
According to Mau some remains of wall paintings were preserved in the north east corner of the room, above the basin, depicting some birds and plants on yellow ground above a high red soccle (the only element of which remains are preserved). The basin itself probably belongs to secondary phase of the building history of the house, since it is built against plaster covering the narrow east part of the wall between this room and room d; a wall, that due to its material (amongst other spolia of coccio-pesto) should itself belong to a later phase in the life span of this house.
