Ancient Romans | Pompejanum: A garden wall as a view

On August 24, 79 AD, at around 10 a.m., the people of Pompeii witnessed the peak of Mount Vesuvius erupting with a terrific roar. Molten, gas-rich magma was hurled high into the air, bursting under the escaping gas pressure, and, driven southward by the wind, raining ash and pumice on Pompeii.

At this point, the city, located in the coastal hinterland of the Gulf of Naples, had been a Roman colony for a century and a half; officially, it was called Colonia Veneria Cornelia Pompeianorum. Those fleeing the rain of ash, many of Oscan-Samnite origin, didn't get far. They collapsed from exhaustion after a short time, and those who sought refuge in villas or tombs suffocated or were crushed by the buildings collapsing under the numerous tremors. The city's prosperity was wiped out. It was based on slave labor, as a study by Seth Bernard (University of Toronto) recently published in the British journal "Past & Present" underlines.

Pompeii lay beneath a relatively loose layer of ash. The fertile soil was covered with lush vegetation. Hardly anyone knew about the devastating volcanic eruption. Excavations only began in 1748. After 1808, they experienced a major, but short-lived, boom when the French officer Joachim Murat and his wife Caroline, Napoleon's sister, ascended the Neapolitan throne. The objects unearthed soon became sought-after collector's items. Excavations in Pompeii continue to this day. In October of last year, a house was uncovered, revealing four wall paintings, including one depicting a satyr and a nymph having sex.

In Aschaffenburg, one can admire a replica of a Roman villa, like the one that once stood in Pompeii: the Pompejanum. Because of its mild climate, the Lower Franconian town is often referred to as the "Bavarian Nice." It owes this name to Ludwig I, King of Bavaria from 1825 to 1848, who loved the Mediterranean climate . He declared Aschaffenburg his favorite summer residence. In 1826, he acquired parts of the collection of Caroline Murat, whose passion for Pompeii he shared. Ludwig had visited the excavated Roman city several times since his time as Crown Prince. He poetically lamented its former demise: "What the earth faithfully concealed for eighteen centuries / In the sacred darkness, soon fades away when it has come / to the light, we only see it, never to see it again..."

He was particularly fascinated by the lavishly furnished villas of Pompeii. They inspired him to make this world of life accessible north of the Alps. This is how the Pompejanum was created, towering above a small wine-growing region on the Main River. The model for its architecture and furnishings was the Casa dei Dioscuri, the house of Castor and Pollux, in Pompeii. The idea for a 1:1 replica of this building probably came to Ludwig on a trip with his architect Friedrich von Gärtner (1791–1847) in 1839. Klump then oversaw the construction work, and his successor was his nephew Karl Friedrich Klump (1811–1885). Ludwig commissioned his artistic advisor Martin von Wagner (1777–1858) to furnish the house.

Unlike the Roman houses in Pompeii, the Pompejanum stands free, and Friedrich von Gärtner added an impressive exterior staircase with a colonnade and a viewing pavilion on the roof. By 1848, the shell was practically complete, and the interior was finished in 1850. However, the new building quickly fell into disrepair, as the moisture-sensitive wall paintings of the open southern construction were not able to withstand the harsh Franconian winter climate. The Aschaffenburg painter Adalbert Hock (1866–1949) was repeatedly occupied with repairs and new creations for four decades.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the Pompejanum was severely damaged; ceilings and walls, along with the paintings, collapsed in the ground-floor rooms around the atrium. It wasn't until August 1994 that the ground floor of the Pompejanum was opened as the first section of the museum.

Today's visitors see a museum of itself, as the restoration was carried out in stages. The original state of the wall paintings is visible or can be guessed at in many places. The building consists of an almost square area around the atrium and a somewhat larger building wing arranged in a U-shape around the viridarium, the house garden. Distributed throughout the building, on pedestals, rest the artificial marble heads of Greek poets and thinkers, as well as of important Roman emperors up to the fall of Pompeii. In the center of the red wall panels are the mythological figures painted after models in the House of Castor and Pollux. In a restored cubiculum (bedroom) stands a marble statue of Bacchus (Greek: Dionysus), the god of wine, and in another a statue of Fortuna, who is depicted as "Agathe Tyche" (Good Fortune) in Greek and Roman art.

The Romans dined lying down, that is, stretched out on couch-like loungers and propped up on cushions. Their dining room was called a triclinium because it usually featured three klinia, or three loungers, arranged in a horseshoe shape or around a table. The klinia in the two dining rooms of the Pompeianum are modern copies. The summer triclinium, accessible through the portico, offers a view of the viridarium (from the Latin "green"), the house garden.

In Pompeii, the back of the viridarium usually abutted either a street, as in the House of Castor and Pollux, or the rear wall of the adjacent house. Therefore, this side of the garden was also enclosed by a wall and painted with garden motifs. Fountains, birds, trees, and flowering shrubs were intended to visually enlarge the small garden. In the Pompeianum, this imitation led to the peculiar result of painting such a view onto a garden wall that blocked the view of the surrounding area.

The white mosaic floor with black dots in the anteroom to the summer triclinium is the best-preserved in the Pompeianum. Atop it rests a white marble figure of a drunken satyr leaning on a wineskin. It is a Roman copy of a Greek original. Those who want to be drunk like the satyr won't have it easy: "Pompeian" wine, the wine made from the grapes ripening beneath the Pompeianum, is available only in a single Aschaffenburg liquor store, whose name can be requested at the cash register of this royal object for the study of ancient culture.

Pompejanum, Pompejanumstrasse 5, Aschaffenburg. Closed from November to March, as well as on Mondays (except on public holidays). The special exhibition "Inspiration Pompeii – 175 Years of the Pompejanum's Interior" is on display until October 31st: previously unseen drawings from the construction period and a silver treasure from Pompeii.