Sights in Pompeii
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Macellum
The macellum was the city's main meat and fish market.
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Campanile
The sanctuary is flanked by a freestanding 80m-high campanile.
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Tempio di Iside
The pre-Roman Tempio di Iside was a popular place of cult worship.
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Museo Vesuviano
The Museo Vesuviano contains an interesting array of artefacts.
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Tempio di Giove
North of the forum stands the Tempio di Giove, one of whose two flanking triumphal arches remains.
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Foro Triangolare
At the end of Via dei Teatri, the green Foro Triangolare would originally have overlooked the sea.
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Teatro Piccolo
Next door to Teatro Grande, the Teatro Piccolo, also known as the Odeion, was once an indoor theatre.
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Casa del Poeta Tragico
The Casa del Poeta Tragico features the world's first 'beware of the dog' - cave canem - warnings.
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Teatro Grande
The main attraction at Foro Triangolare was, and still is, the 2nd-century-BC Teatro Grande, a huge 5000-seat theatre.
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Grande Palestra
The Grande Palestra is an athletics field with an impressive portico and, at its centre, the remains of a swimming pool.
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Foro
The grassy foro adjacent to the temple was the city's main piazza - a huge traffic-free rectangle flanked by limestone columns.
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Tempio di Apollo
Opposite the basilica, the Tempio di Apollo is the oldest and most important of Pompeii's religious buildings, dating to the 2nd century BC.
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Tempio di Venere
Immediately on the right as you enter the ruin's main entrance is the 1st-century BC Tempio di Venere, formerly one of the town's most opulent temples.
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Anfiteatro
The grassy anfiteatro is the oldest-known Roman amphitheatre in existence. Built in 70 BC, it was at one time capable of holding up to 20,000 bloodthirsty spectators.
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Casa dei Vettii
To the north in the ruins, on Vicolo di Mercurio, the Casa dei Vettii is home to a famous depiction of Priapus with his gigantic phallus balanced on a pair of scales.
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Quadriportico dei Teatri
Behind the Teatro Grande's stage, the porticoed Quadriportico dei Teatri was initially used for the audience to stroll between acts and later as a barracks for gladiators.
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Granai del Foro
The Granai del Foro, now used to store hundreds of amphorae and a number of body casts. These casts were made in the late 19th century by pouring plaster into the hollows left by disintegrated bodies.
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Porta Marina
The ruin site's main entrance is at Porta Marina, the most impressive of the seven gates that punctuated the ancient town walls. A busy passageway, now as then, it originally connected the town with the nearby harbour.
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Casa della Venere in Conchiglia
Towards the northeastern end of Via dell'Abbondanza, Casa della Venere in Conchiglia harbours a lovely peristyle looking onto a small, manicured garden. It's here in the garden that you'll find the striking Venus fresco after which the house is named.
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Lupanare
From the market follow Via degli Augustali until Vicolo del Lupanare. Halfway down this narrow alley is the Lupanare, the city's only dedicated brothel. A tiny two-storey building with five rooms on each floor, it's lined with some of Pompeii's raunchiest frescoes.
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Terme Stabiane
On Via dell'Abbondanza, the Terme Stabiane is a typical 2nd-century-BC bath complex. Entering from the vestibule, bathers would stop off in the vaulted apodyterium (changing room) before passing through to the tepidarium (warm room) and caldarium (hot room).
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Ruins of Pompeii
The ruins of Pompeii are priceless. Much of the site's value lies in the fact that it wasn't simply blown away by Vesuvius in AD 79, rather it was buried under a layer of lapilli (burning fragments of pumice stone). The result is a remarkably well-preserved slice of ancient life, where visitors can walk down Roman streets and snoop around millennia-old abodes and businesses (including a brothel).
As terrible as the eruption was, it could have been worse. Seventeen years earlier Pompeii (Pompei in Italian) had been devastated by an earthquake and much of the 20,000-strong population had been evacuated. Many had not returned by the time Vesuvius blew, but 2000 men, women…
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Casa del Fauno
Turn into Via Stabiana to see some of Pompeii's grandest houses. Turn left into Via della Fortuna for the Casa del Fauno, Pompeii's largest private house. Named after the small bronze statue in the impluvium (rain tank), it was here that early excavators found Pompeii's greatest mosaics, most of which are now in Naples' Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
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Santuario della Madonna del Rosario
Dominating modern Pompeii's centre, the Santuario della Madonna del Rosario was consecrated in 1891, some 15 years after the miracle that guaranteed its fame. In 1876 a young girl was cured of epilepsy after praying in front of the painting Virgin of the Rosary with Child, above the main altar. News spread rapidly and to this day the painting is the subject of popular devotion.
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Villa dei Misteri
On Via Consolare takes you out of the town through Porta Ercolano. Continue past Villa di Diomede, turn right, and you'll come to the Villa dei Misteri, one of the most complete structures left standing in Pompeii. The Dionysiac Frieze, the most important fresco still on site, spans the walls of the large dining room. One of the largest paintings from the ancient world, it depicts the initiation of a bride-to-be into the cult of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
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