The atrium, as usual, is surrounded with bed-chambers. A peculiarity not yet found in any other house is a niche or closet on the left of the atrium, having on one side an opening only large enough to introduce the hand, whence it has been conjectured that it served as a receptacle for some valuable objects. It is painted inside with a wall of quadrangular pieces of marble of various colors, terminated at top with a cornice. In each of the squares is a fish, bird, or quadruped.
This closet or niche stands at a door of the room in which is an entrance to a subterranean passage, having its exit in the Via del Lupanare. There is nothing very remarkable in the other apartments of this house. Behind is a peristyle with twelve columns, in the garden of which shrubs are said to have been discovered in a carbonized state.
Further down the same Street of the Augustals, at the angle which it forms with the Street of Stabiæ, is the house of a baker, having on the external wall the name Modestum in red letters. For a tradesman it seems to have been a comfortable house, having an atrium and fountain, and some painted chambers. Beyond the atrium is a spacious court with mills and an oven. The oven was charged with more than eighty loaves, the forms of which are still perfect, though they are reduced to a carbonaceous state. They are preserved in the Museum.
The narrow street to which we have alluded, as entering the Via del Lupanare nearly opposite to the house of Siricus, has been called the Via del Balcone, from a small house with a projecting balcony or mænianum. Indications of balconies have been found elsewhere, and indeed there were evidently some in the Via del Lupanare; but this is the only instance of one restored to its pristine state, through the care of Signor Fiorelli in substituting fresh timbers for those which had become carbonized. The visitor may ascend to the first floor of this house, from which the balcony projects several feet into the narrow lane. In the atrium of this house is a very pretty fountain.
The house next to that of the Balcony, facing the entrance of a small street leading from the Via dell Abbondanza, and numbered 7 on the door post, has a few pictures in a tolerable state of preservation. In a painting in the furthest room on the left of the atrium Theseus is seen departing in his ship; Ariadne, roused from sleep, gazes on him with despair, while a little weeping Cupid stands by her side. In the same apartment are two other well-preserved pictures, the subjects of which it is not easy to explain. In one is a female displaying to a man two little figures in a nest, representing apparently the birth of the Dioscuri. The other is sometimes called the Rape of Helen. There are also several medallion heads around.