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The House of Joseph II, in Regio VIII of Pompeii, is one of the most interesting residences built along the city’s southern edge. The form of the terrain allowed the house to be developed across three superimposed storeys, exploiting the steep slope of the Pompeian plateau. Founded in the Samnite period, the building preserves extensive evidence of its successive architectural and decorative phases.
The upper floor, entered from Via della Regina, was arranged around an atrium. Rooms were laid out in a largely symmetrical pattern on either side, and many retained early cement-based floors with geometric decoration, some belonging to the house’s first phases. A corridor linked the atrium to the southern part of the residence and to the lower levels.
The private bath suite on the lower floors is particularly noteworthy. Rooms identified as the tepidarium, caldarium and frigidarium are documented, some of which retained painted decoration. The presence of private baths attests to the high status achieved by the residence in its most monumental phases.
The building is known as the House of Joseph II because an excavation took place here in 1769 in the presence of Emperor Joseph II of Habsburg-Lorraine. The property was explored in several phases from the 18th century through the 19th and 20th centuries.
Finds from the house also include a statuette of Harpocrates, discovered in the lararium and now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. With its several levels and numerous alterations over time, the complex is a particularly significant example of the large houses of the Insula Meridionalis.