I was there last month, and its tiny, the rooms are in fact cubicles ... i have been in bigger changing rooms :oops:
http://medarch.blogspot.com/2006/10/ero ... el-on.html
[quote] Erotic frescoes put Pompeii brothel on the tourist map
Source: Times Online
From Richard Owen in Rome
A LUXURIOUS brothel that once entertained wealthy clients in Pompeii has been opened as a visitor attraction after painstaking restoration.
The two-storey structure, which features erotic frescoes that leave little to the imagination, is expected to become one of the ancient city’s top draws. Officials who unveiled it yesterday emphasised that the year-long restoration had been carried out in the interests of archaeology — and to save the frescoes — rather than prurience. The brothel was named the Lupanare — from lupa (she-wolf), the colloquial Latin term for a prostitute. Prices were posted outside the building, which had three entrances, and the frescoes depict the sexual services on offer.
The Lupanare boasted ten rooms, five on each floor, with the upper floor (which had a balcony) reserved for more important and wealthier clients. Sexual activity took place on stone beds, which would have been covered by mattresses.
Like other parts of pleasure-loving Pompeii, the brothel was overwhelmed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried the city in a 6m (19½ft) layer of volcanish ash in AD79. The ash preserved the city as a time capsule until the 18th century, when the first excavations began to bring to light well- preserved houses, shops, frescoes and skeletons of people caught as they tried to flee.
Scholars say that Pompeii had many brothels, but most consisted only of a single room, often above a shop or wine bar. The prostitutes were slaves and were usually of Greek or Oriental origin. Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, superintendent of Pompeii, said that ancient Roman attitudes to sex and obscenity were more relaxed than those of later civilisations.
Erotic objects found during the 18th and 19th-century excavations were considered so salacious they were kept in a “secret cabinetâ€
I was extremely upset to find access to the street barred, when I was there last year. Of course I did not tell my wife how upset I was to miss out on seeing the Roman brothel!!
that was probably the busiest place in Pompeii scavi in September (2007), there was always a long line, all the tour groups went there, and you went through in just a couple of minutes. The street was crowded every time I went by..... :twisted:
When I was last there (2005), it was closed off with a sign that tourists in Italy come to know well, and hate! ..."Chiuso per restoratio" = closed for restoration :evil:
Fortunately,I had seen it on a number of previous occasions.....in fact, back in the mid-seventies when I first saw Pompeii, I had the place to myself for 20 minutes or more.......then, you could wander freely everywhere........
