The inn's five dining rooms were identically shaped, each containing three painted walls. One of the more ornate rooms included images of a reclining river god holding a cornucopia, a winged Minerva, and an image in miniature of an elegant maritime villa. Archaeologists removed the wall paintings to a museum and reburied the site. We were working against time and water, and we had to make decisions. Stacked in a corner were more than 100 rectangular slabs of white Carrara marble.
Archaeologists believe the marble was intended to pave the inn's unfinished bath complex.
None wore any personal adornments, leading excavators to believe they were servants. Because the baths were incomplete at the time of the eruption, Ciro Nappa believes the victims were at work finishing the interior. Footprints of five different people were also found in the hardened ash in the area of the baths. Four were barefoot, while one footprint was of a sandal with nails.