Casa del Sacello di legno
The house owes its name to a beautiful wooden cabinet with a lararium in the shape of a small temple with Corinthian capitals, found charred in a cubicula on the ground floor to the right of the entrance.
The domus, despite minor transformations over time, has preserved until its last phase of life the typical appearance of Herculaneum homes from the 2nd century B.C. This is evidenced by the floor plan arrangement of the rooms, with the canonical sequence of entrance, fauces, atrium, and tablinium. In fact, in the atrium, traces of an ancient loggia are visible, which was likely to extend over the tablinium and the rooms facing the V Cardo, according to a model well represented in Herculaneum by the Casa Sannitica. Today, the house appears bare with only a few remnants of decorations referring to its last phase of life, but it must have had a certain dignity in ancient times despite its modest floor plan development. This is confirmed by the beautiful floor of the tablinium, which shows a cocciopesto decorated with geometric patterns created by inserting white tiles, dated between the 2nd and 1st century B.C.
Right at the entrance to this room, an archaeological test was carried out, allowing investigation of the layers beneath the cocciopesto flooring of the atrium. This led to the discovery of a brick and masonry channel, oriented East-West, which was used to convey water from the roofs into the impluvium basin and from there into the underlying cistern. It was, therefore, part of the rainwater collection system used by the inhabitants, who could retrieve it through the circular opening on the south side of the basin. This feature remained in use until the final moments of the building’s life, directly attesting that, unlike many other houses in Herculaneum, this domus did not have running water when the eruption occurred in 79 A.D.
Record of maintenance interventions carried out in the Casa del Sacello di Legno
In this domus, some interventions of a predominantly structural nature, such as the reconstruction of the few roof slabs present in the house, were carried out in previous years. The current intervention focused mainly on preparatory work for public use. Like the Casa del Colonnato Tuscanico, this domus is also part of a “phased” design approach aimed at effective resource distribution. The work mainly involved the flooring of the fauces and atrium, areas that were uncovered and thus affected by water stagnation and the growth of invasive vegetation. Following careful archaeological cleaning, it was possible to observe the extremely poor condition of the original subfloor and the remaining portions of ancient finishes. Furthermore, limited thicknesses were identified where a modern sacrificial screed could be laid over the ancient layer. For this reason, the interventions carried out, such as the filling of the ancient portions and the covering of the subfloor, are considered experimental in nature, in order to assess their durability over time, without coverings and under the anthropic pressure caused by foot traffic. The works were completed with some repairs to the upper portions of the walls and the installation of new closure fixtures.