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Ornamental Painting on Campanian House Façades

: Since the late 1980s, studies of decoration in Campanian houses have emphasised the importance of painting schemes for the organisation of social activities and movement, examin-ing the domus and its decor primarily from the perspective of the non-resident. At the same time, painted decoration on façades – particularly the non-figurative variety – has been ignored almost entirely in scholarly literature, despite its obvious communicative disposition. After an historical introduction, this paper considers a selection of common schemes employed in ornamental façade painting, exploring their relationship with similar designs found inside the house. The discussion concludes with some preliminary thoughts on the relationship between interior and exterior decoration, access and privacy in the dwellings of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the modern world, the exterior decoration of urban buildings plays a central role in the visual experience of the cityscape. Through the implementation of various decorative techniques, façades can draw the attention of the viewer and communicate information about a property’s function, its occupants and its status within the community 1 . This transfer of information is successful due primarily to the knowledge and expectations of the viewer, which help him/her decipher the visual language presented and thus complete the semantic circle, as it were 2 . The situation was little different in antiquity, although for the modern researcher, deciphering the relationship between perceiver and material is considerably more challenging, because (1) identifying the expectations of ancient pedestrians is, naturally, quite difficult and (2) the material record with which they engaged has largely been destroyed.