Blogging from A to Z: L is for Lupanar

Masonry bed inside the lupanar

Hi, everyone. I suspect many of you have been waiting for this entry in my series of facts about Pompeii. One of the most famous buildings is the lupanar, or brothel. The name comes from “lupa,” (she-wolf), which is what the prostitutes were called.

Pompeii’s lupanar is a two-story building. It’s unclear what the upstairs rooms were used for, but the downstairs rooms were clearly cubicles for the prostitutes and their customers. Each one had a masonry bed, which one hopes had cushions and blankets of some sort for comfort. The rooms probably had curtains over the doors. There was also a latrine at the back of the building, which had entries off of two different streets.

The lupanar is also rather famous for the erotic art over the cubicles. Some archaeologists theorize that these are advertisements concerning the “specialty” of the prostitute using the room, but it’s more likely that customers were just brought to which ever space was currently available. This latter assumption is due to the majority of graffiti being inside the first two rooms inside the doorway off the main street.

Erotic art over one of the doorways

While it’s likely that prostitution occurred in other locations, this is the only purpose-built brothel in Pompeii of which we are aware. Male marital fidelity was not expected, so seeing a prostitute seems to have been a fairly common occurrence among the lower middle classes. The wealthier classes could, and did, take advantage of their slaves of either gender for extramarital relations.

(Photos by the author)