---
title: "Lupanar VII.12.18–20 - Pompeii Online"
description: "Pompeii’s Lupanar is the city’s clearest purpose-built brothel, preserving masonry beds, erotic paintings and a remarkable archive of graffiti."
url: "https://www.pompeionline.net/en/buildings-and-places/regio-vii/lupanar-vii-12-18-20"
date: "2026-09-16T12:43:28+00:00"
language: "en-GB"
---

#  Lupanar VII.12.18–20

Pompeii’s **Lupanar**, in Regio VII between Vicolo del Lupanare and Vicolo del Balcone Pensile, is the building in the ancient city most clearly identified as having been specifically intended for prostitution.

With its small rooms, masonry beds, erotic paintings and numerous graffiti scratched into the walls, the Lupanar offers exceptionally direct evidence for an aspect of Roman daily life that is rarely preserved so clearly.

The building had **two storeys** and several entrances. The ground floor—the best-known part and the one most commonly associated with the image of Pompeii’s Lupanar—was arranged around a narrow corridor onto which five small rooms opened.

### Why it is called the Lupanar

The term **lupanar** derives from the Latin *lupa*, “she-wolf”, a word also used to denote a prostitute.

A *lupanar* was therefore a place where prostitution was practised.

Paid sexual activity in Pompeii was not confined to this building. It is also documented or proposed in taverns, inns, private houses and other premises throughout the city.

The Lupanar in Regio VII is exceptional, however, because the architectural organisation of the entire building appears to have been designed specifically for this activity.

### The five ground-floor rooms

On the ground floor, a narrow corridor connected the two main entrances.

**Five small rooms** opened on either side, each furnished with a bed built directly in masonry.

The beds were very simple: raised structures of stone and mortar on which mattresses, blankets or other soft materials would have been placed.

The rooms had no actual doors and could be closed with **curtains**, providing only minimal separation from the corridor.

The rooms’ extremely small dimensions clearly show that they were not intended as ordinary living quarters.

### The masonry beds

The distinctive **masonry beds** are among the features that make the Lupanar immediately recognisable.

The sloping surface and raised headrest are still clearly visible.

What can be seen today is, of course, only the bed’s permanent structure. Mattresses, fabrics or padding must have been used to make the surface less rigid.

The simplicity of the furnishings contrasts sharply with the richly appointed bedrooms of Pompeii’s great domus and presents an activity organised within basic, functional spaces.

### The erotic paintings

A series of small **panels with erotic scenes** survives above the doors of the ground-floor rooms.

They depict men and women engaged in different sexual acts and are among the Lupanar’s most famous features.

Traditionally, these images have been interpreted as a kind of **catalogue of the services offered to clients**.

This is an appealing and widely repeated explanation, but it should not be treated as certain.

In Roman art, erotic images could serve different purposes and also appeared in private houses, baths and other settings not used for prostitution.

At the Lupanar, however, their position directly above the room doors creates an especially clear relationship between the paintings and the activity that took place in the building.

### The graffiti

Perhaps even more important than the paintings are the many **graffiti scratched into the walls**.

Clients, prostitutes and others who frequented the building left names, comments, greetings, declarations, insults and brief records of their experiences.

They are remarkable documents because they do not belong to the official language of public inscriptions.

Rather than magistrates, emperors or wealthy property owners, it is the voices of ordinary people that emerge here, often in informal, spontaneous Latin.

Some graffiti recall sexual encounters, others name women or men, while still others contain simple personal messages.

The walls of the Lupanar thus form a kind of **spontaneous archive of daily life in Pompeii**.

### The women who worked in the Lupanar

The Archaeological Park’s official guide notes that many of the prostitutes who worked in the Lupanar were probably **enslaved women of Greek or eastern Mediterranean origin**.

Prostitution in the Roman world was closely connected with slavery.

For many women, therefore, it was not a freely chosen occupation: they might be the property of a master who profited from their work.

The names preserved in the graffiti, many of them Greek in origin, are also consistent with the strong presence of people from the eastern Mediterranean among the enslaved population of Roman cities.

This aspect is essential if the Lupanar is not to be reduced to an erotic curiosity.

Behind the paintings and graffiti were social relationships marked by profound **inequalities in freedom, wealth and power**.

### What did a service cost?

Pompeian sources and the evidence from the Lupanar indicate relatively low prices.

According to the Park’s guide, a service might cost approximately **two to eight asses**.

By comparison, a simple cup of wine might cost around one as.

Prices could naturally vary according to the people involved, the place and the service requested.

The evidence nevertheless shows that the Lupanar was not necessarily an establishment intended exclusively for the wealthiest classes.

It formed part of the city’s everyday life and could be frequented by men from different social levels.

### The upper storey

The Lupanar did not end at ground-floor level.

A separate entrance at doorway **VII.12.20**, on Vicolo del Balcone Pensile, led by a staircase to the **upper storey**.

Here a corridor provided access to five further small rooms.

The separate entrances allowed the upper floor to function at least partly independently of the rooms below.

The site’s traditional guide also associates this area with spaces used by the women who worked in the building and by its manager.

The upper storey preserves fewer striking features than the lower one, but it is important for understanding that the Lupanar was a more complex structure than the five celebrated cells normally seen in photographs.

### The latrine

A **latrine** stands at the end of the ground-floor corridor, beneath the stairwell.

Its presence confirms the building’s functional, organised character.

Even an apparently simple establishment such as the Lupanar required facilities for the people who worked there and those who visited it.

Latrines, drainage, separate entrances and the arrangement of the rooms show that this was not a house adapted for occasional use, but a space organised for a specific function.

### Prostitution and Roman society

Prostitution was legal in the Roman world, but those who practised it generally occupied a marginal social position.

Prostitutes could be classed as ***infames***, a status that entailed social and legal restrictions.

For enslaved women the situation was still more complex, since their bodies and labour could be directly controlled by their owners.

At the same time, prostitution was an openly present reality in Roman society.

The quantity of graffiti, literary references and archaeological evidence shows that it was neither a hidden nor an exceptional phenomenon.

The Lupanar therefore reveals one of the contradictions of Roman society: an activity that was widely practised and tolerated, yet associated with people placed outside the bounds of social respectability.

### Sexuality and imagery in Pompeii

The Lupanar’s paintings must also be understood within the broader context of the **representation of sexuality in Pompeii**.

Erotic images have been found in numerous houses, baths and public places.

Roman culture did not necessarily apply modern distinctions between erotic, decorative, comic and religious imagery.

The phallus, for example, could also have an **apotropaic** function, protecting against the evil eye, and was associated with fertility, prosperity and good fortune.

Not every sexual image found in Pompeii therefore indicates the presence of a brothel.

The Lupanar is different precisely because its **architecture, graffiti, rooms and decoration all converge** to document prostitution with unusual clarity.

### Not every erotic setting was a brothel

The fame of the Lupanar has in the past contributed to over-interpretation.

During the first centuries of excavation, the presence of erotic paintings or sexual graffiti sometimes led numerous Pompeian buildings to be identified as brothels.

Modern scholarship is far more cautious.

An erotic painting in a house, tavern or bath building is not by itself sufficient to demonstrate that prostitution took place there.

Lupanar VII.12.18–20 is therefore particularly important because it is the **clearest and best-documented archaeological example** of a building specifically organised for this activity.

### Its position in the city

The Lupanar stands in a very central part of Pompeii, not far from **Via dell’Abbondanza, the Stabian Baths and the Civil Forum**.

Its location made it readily accessible from different parts of the city.

The surrounding district was densely built up and contained houses, shops, bakeries, public establishments and workshops.

The Lupanar therefore did not occupy an isolated or marginal area.

It was fully integrated into the urban fabric and the city’s everyday life.

### The discovery in 1862

The Lupanar was brought to light in **1862**.

The discovery of the rooms, erotic paintings and, above all, the very numerous graffiti immediately aroused great interest.

In the 19th century, however, ancient sexuality was a difficult subject.

Many erotic finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum were long kept in the so-called **Secret Cabinet** of the Archaeological Museum in Naples, to which access was restricted.

The modern history of the Lupanar therefore also reflects the gradual change in contemporary society’s attitudes towards sexuality in antiquity.

### One of Pompeii’s best-known buildings

Today the Lupanar is one of the most famous and most visited monuments in the entire archaeological site.

Its renown inevitably derives from the erotic paintings, but to focus on this element alone is to miss much of its historical value.

The building makes it possible to examine **sexuality, slavery, the economy, social inequality, popular culture and everyday writing** in a Roman city at the same time.

The small rooms and graffiti take visitors far from the sumptuous halls of the great domus and the monumental buildings of the Forum.

They bring into view people who often had no political or social power, some of whom are known to us only from a name rapidly scratched into a wall.

For this reason, **Lupanar VII.12.18–20** is one of the most immediate and complex records of daily life in 1st-century AD Pompeii.

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