The building has been dubbed the House of the Lararium, after its lavish courtyard shrine to household spirits.
which inspired the wonderful decoration of the courtyard represented for them more a future they dreamed of than a lived reality,” he added.
Inside, archaeologists found a bedroom, and were able to make casts of the pillow and parts of the bed frame for the simple cot. The room’s ceiling had collapsed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but a wooden chest containing a clay plate and a lantern, bearing a bas-relief sculpture of Zeus turning into an eagle, managed to survive, its lid left ajar, presumably as its owners fled the doomed city.
Excavations at the House of the Lararium in Pompeii. Photo courtesy of the Pompeii Archaeological Park.