Erotic pictures from pompeii

Marguerite Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence. In our series on sexual histories, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today. Like the anxious men who began excavations at Pompeii in the 18th century and discovered more about the ancient Italians than they had bargained for — such as phallic-shaped lamps — historians of sex are regularly confronted with case studies from the past that challenge their own ethics.

Erotic art in Pompeii and Herculaneum has been both exhibited as art and censored as pornography. The Roman cities around the bay of Naples were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD , thereby preserving their buildings and artifacts until extensive archaeological excavations began in the 18th century. These digs revealed the cities to be rich in erotic artifacts such as statues, frescoes , and household items decorated with sexual themes. The ubiquity of such imagery and items indicates that the treatment of sexuality in ancient Rome was more relaxed than current Western culture. However, much of what might strike modern viewers as erotic imagery e. This clash of cultures led to a large number of erotic artifacts from Pompeii being locked away from the public for nearly years. In , when King Francis I of Naples visited the Pompeii exhibition at the Naples National Archaeological Museum with his wife and daughter, he was embarrassed by the erotic artwork and ordered it to be locked away in a "secret cabinet", accessible only to "people of mature age and respected morals".

Pompeii is an amazing city and a must-do during every trip to Italy. You can visit it traveling by train just 30 minutes from Naples. Pompeii was destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and most of it was buried under volcanic ashes.

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