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The House of the Wild Boar I stands in Regio VIII on Via dell’Abbondanza, a short distance from the Forum. Arranged around an atrium and peristyle, the house retains elements dating back to the Samnite period and records a long history of alteration and renovation.
The house takes its name from the celebrated entrance-floor mosaic, which shows a wild boar being attacked by two dogs. The mosaic leads into an atrium with especially elaborate decoration: geometric motifs surround the impluvium, together with a band depicting city walls with towers and battlements.
Several rooms had floors made using different techniques, ranging from cement-based pavements and opus sectile to refined black-and-white mosaics. A colonnaded peristyle opened in the southern part of the house, with rooms used for private life and reception arranged around it.
The house also yielded a refined polychrome mosaic showing Nilotic ducks among lotus flowers, now in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
The decoration records different phases in the history of the residence. Earlier elements survive alongside floors dating to the first decades of the 1st century AD, while many walls were redecorated in the Fourth Pompeian Style after the earthquake of AD 62.