Necropolis of Nocera Gate – Regio II, Suburb

The Necropolis of Nocera Gate extends along a road outside the walls in the south-eastern part of Pompeii. It is one of the city’s largest and best-preserved burial grounds.

The necropolis developed mainly after the foundation of the Roman colony in 80 BC and remained in use until the eruption of AD 79. Its monuments therefore allow us to trace roughly a century and a half of change in Pompeian funerary practices.

The tombs vary greatly in type and size. Among the most monumental is that of Eumachia, a public priestess and prominent member of the city’s elite who also owned the large building overlooking the Forum. Her funerary monument included a broad semicircular structure and spaces for burial and commemoration.

Alongside the tombs of the wealthiest families are funerary enclosures and much simpler burials. This diversity makes the necropolis particularly important for understanding not only the elite, but also freedpeople, enslaved people, children and other groups less visible in the city’s public monuments.

Near the centre of the crossroads by the necropolis stands the cippus of Titus Suedius Clemens, the magistrate sent by Emperor Vespasian to restore the boundaries of public land that had been illegally occupied after the earthquake of AD 62.