Transcript Pompeii

Pompeii
Electronic Tutorials were created by Jack Sullivan, Assistant Professor, for
the History of Landscape Architecture (LARC 263), a survey course in the
Department of Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture,
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Maryland.
This presentation was made possible with Instructional Improvement
Grants in 1995 and 1996 from the Center for Teaching Excellence. The
following knowledgeable, patient and generous team of players were
invaluable to the making of these digital compilations. Thank you all for
the hard work and technical lessons.
Tamela D. Michaels, Graduate Student, Technical Support, Colleague
Fernando Urrea, Technical Support
David Jones, Technical Support
The images used in these tutorials are from personal collections and from the collections of the
School of Architecture at the University of Maryland. The numbers on each image correspond
with those in the database housed at the Architecture Slide Library.
Pompeii
In the Shadow of Mt. Vesuvius (AD 79)
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Located on the Bay of Naples, southwest of Rome, the city of Pompeii had
been a Greek military settlement until it became a Roman colony in 80 B.C.
In 79 AD, only 17 years after a severe earthquake had done extensive damage,
Mt. Vesuvius erupted and left a layer of volcanic pumice (lapilli), a shroud as
deep as six meters. As a result, the city, like its neighbor Herculaneum, was
preserved in its entirety.
Pompeii
The Grid of the City
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Pompeii was located on a ledge overlooking the bay at the mouth of the Sarnus
River. It was framed by an irregular oval-shaped wall and surrounded by
agricultural land that had been made extremely fertile by successive volcanic
eruptions. The long city blocks (insulae) were made up of 2- and 3-story
buildings organized on a grid of narrow paved streets. In 79 AD it had a
population of about 20,000 people.
Pompeii
The Pompeiian
House in Context
The plan illustrates the place that
the typical house in Pompeii had
occupied in the city fabric. The
large house (center, right) takes a
full block, surrounded by streets
on all four sides, yet still inward
focused to the atrium and peristyle
gardens. Shops on the perimeter
open to the passing customer on
the street. The large vegetable
garden may have served more of
the population than just the house
occupants, either as a communal
garden or as a business venture in
the local market. The smaller
homes are nested within the block,
with common walls
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Pompeii
Aerial View of the Gymnasium
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Civic structures like the gymnasium shown here, as well as other important
public buildings and landscapes, were typically placed on the sites of key
gathering places or near the outer perimeter of the city. The forum was located
in the oldest, most sacred area of town to the southwest. The main street, the
Via Stabiana, passed through the forum and followed a natural depression
toward the northeast.
Pompeii
Plan of the Urban Villa
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The well-preserved evidence at the House of the Pansa in Pompeii gives us a
detailed description of the form and function of urban habitation. The spine
of the house, on which the spaces hung, led from the front door through the
vestibule, the atrium, the peristyle and out into the enclosed fruit orchard or
vegetable garden (the viridaria). Archaeological evidence obtained by making
plaster casts of the root cavities, shows that both trees and informal plantings
were part of the peristyle and the viridaria.
Pompeii
Garden Roots
The balloon photograph by
Stanley Jashemski, husband,
scientist and collaborator of
the archaeologist Wilhelmina
Jashemski, illustrates how a
great number of trees filled
this Pompeii viridaria. The
plaster casts of the tree root
cavities indicate a pattern of
planting that implies a strong
garden structure that mimics
the architecture of the garden
and estyablishes a variety of
subspaces throughout.
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Pompeii
House and Garden in the Family Home
The plan of the House of the
Vettii illustrates a variation of
the Pompeiian house. It
portrays the common theme
of a combined indoor and
outdoor living arrangement
in a Mediterranean climate
that has mild winters and hot
summers. This noble house is
smaller than the House of the
Pansa and does not have its
own viridaria but maintains
similar design characteristics
and organizing elements. The
vestibule (2) welcomed you
from the street and the
atrium (3) and peristyle (4)
were central garden rooms
that united family functions.
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Pompeii
Atrium and Peristyle
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The atrium served as an inner reception
hall around which a variety of small
rooms were clustered. Rainwater poured
into the pool and was stored in a cistern
below. The peristyle was enclosed on all
four sides with a colonnade that
provided protection from the summer
sun and the winter rain.
Pompeii
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Painted Space
The private garden as an ideal
paradise was an important
concept in the culture of many
Roman cities. The desire to be
closely connected to nature
was clearly evident in the
painted surfaces of peristyle
gardens, atriums and interior
rooms throughout the house.
The depiction of garden plants
and wildlife seemed to dissolve
the confining walls and open
each room to the outdoors.
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Pompeii
The Garden on Interior Surfaces
The fresco paintings (paint applied to wet stucco) on the
interior walls created the sense of a light and airy pavilion
sitting comfortably in the middle of the garden. Note the
way in which the corner of the room (below, right) is made
to resemble a column or post, diminishing the weight and
mass of the solid wall construction. Motifs included birds
bird baths and sculpted urns planted with bay or oleander.
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Pompeii
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Garlands Celebrate
an Abundant Landscape
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The floral festoon graced many a home in ancient Pompeii. During community
festivities and family celebrations it was strung throughout the house as a
decoration that brought the beauty and bounty of nature indoors. As in this
depiction of garland, permanently affixed to the wall in a fresco painting, the
flowers represent the joys of civic and family life.
Pompeii
The Garden
for Industry
The peristyle was a place of
industry for the Pompeiian
family. Work tables and
wash basins were common
furnishings and the family
conducted both household
and commercial activities
in the privacy of their
open-air courtyard in this
warm and pleasant climate.
The fresco painting on the
right depicts a gathering of
hard-working cherubs who
are delivering, assembling
and stringing flowers in the
production of garlands.
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Pompeii
The Garden as a Place for Worship
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The wall paintings in the Pompeiian house usually contained representations
of the many gods who were the objects of great admiration and respect. In the
fresco above, Venus reclines on a floating leaf between her dutiful angelic
servants. To the left in the mural, Alexander the Great, an honored Greek
hero, represents the connection to an earlier and influential culture.
Pompeii
The Gods at Home
The household gods were honored
for their benevolence and power,
especially as it was bestowed on the
fertility of the agrarian landscape.
Pompeii was a productive and rich
agricultural center and its citizens
depended on the gods favor for a
consistently high yield. The goddess
Flora, right, represented abundance
and fertility. Other deities in the
form of statuary were the center of
attention in the atrium (below)
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Pompeii
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Enduring Beauty
These modern portraits of the ruins
of ancient Pompeii illustrate the
enduring beauty of the architectural
form of the atrium (right) and the
peristyle gardens. The stone columns
(right and below left), carved with a
diversity of form and scale, survived
the lapilli burial. The brick columns,
(lower right), once decorated with a
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painted stucco surface, survive in a
ruined - and quite romantic - condition.
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Pompeii
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The Influence of Pompeii
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The ruins of Pompeii have been the inspiration for many modern gardens since
their thorough excavation in the late 19th Century. Archaeological studies and
restorations over the past fifty years, especially those conducted by Wilhelmina
Jashemski and her team of experts, have brought new light to the role of the
garden in life of the citizens of this Roman trade center.
Pompeii
Herculaneum in
Malibu
The J. Paul Getty Museum in
Malibu, California, was clearly
modeled after the ancient villas
of the classical Roman period in
history. The wall painting
(above right) is from a villa in
Herculaneum, a resort city on
the Bay of Naples, a nearby
neighbor to Pompeii and a
victim of Vesuvius’ eruption in
AD 79. The painting depicts a
peristyle garden that inspired
the 1975 design for the Getty
(lower right), a private museum
with an extensive collection of
classical antiquities.
Pompeii
Historic Gardens Transported
in Time and Space
The Getty Museum gardens were designed by the Los Angeles firm of
Emmet Wemple and Associates, Landscape Architects. They contain many of
the trees, shrubs, and herbs that were discovered to have been used at the
villas in Pompeii and Herculaneaum. The design research was based on the
extensive landscape archaeology that had been conducted since the 1930’s.
Pompeii
Resources
Jellicoe, Geoffrey and Susan. The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment
from Prehistory to the Present Day. The Viking Press: New York, 1975.
Moore, Charles W., William J. Mitchell, and William Turnbull, Jr. The Poetics of
Gardens. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988.
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History; Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its
Prospects. Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., New York , 1961.
Newton, Norman T. Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape
Architecture. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971.
Pompeii