Huge, erect penises, tightly embracing couples making love and clear gestures – representations of sex and eroticism can be found everywhere in Pompeii.
Scenes in the brothel of the buried city are particularly explicit.
There, murals show what kind of love services prostitutes offer their customers.
The repertoire includes rider position, doggy style, oral sex and much more.
It was slaves who offered their services here in windowless chambers on stone beds.
Incidentally, in those days love for sale cost no more than half a liter of wine or two loaves of bread.
Penises on the streets and on the walls show clients the way to the brothel.
But it’s not only in the relevant establishments that things get down to business.
Open-hearted frescoes are also found in the suburban baths of Pompeii.
On the walls of this public bathing establishment clear pictures show tanned men enjoying themselves with the slightly lighter-skinned women.
And even in private homes, numerous revealing depictions prove the informal relationship of the Pompeians to the subject of sex.
In the “House of the Vettiers” a fresco shows the fertility god Priapos weighing his penis against money with a pendulum scale.
Vulgar graffiti can be found on the walls of houses, such as: “I
I fucked the landlady” or “Whoever reads it gets fucked in the ass, whoever hears it is horny, whoever walks by gets it from behind.”
Everyday objects such as oil lamps also often use erotic depictions: like this fellatio scene on a clay lamp.
Such depictions were often too obscene for the discoverers of Pompeii in the 19th century.
Reliefs with explicit content, vulgar statues and erotic paintings were locked away.
Until the 1970s, the secret collection at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples was closed to the public.
However, new representations are still being unearthed during the excavations at the site, those by visitors
can be viewed.