We're all familiar with the story of Pompeii, the town in southern Italy on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius that was buried under 20 feet of volcanic ash over a matter of hours in 79 AD.
The site has been extensively excavated since at least the 18th century, with archeologists discovering astonishingly well-preserved buildings, monuments and even the bodies of Mt. Vesuvius' victims. It has long been a popular tourist attraction.
Now visitors can get an up-close view of an exquisitely restored house in the heart of Pompeii:
An ornate house – containing a fresco featuring a huge phallus – that was owned by two freed men freed from slavery in the ancient city of Pompeii has reopened to the public.
Yeah, along with the really cool stuff, there's also disturbing content that was pretty par for the course for those Romans.
(They believed that if you made people laugh upon entering a houses or when looking at you, such as by depicting naked people with huge genitals, it warded off curses that could be cast by malevolent stares, called "the evil eye.")
The House of the Vettii was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 before being rediscovered in a largely preserved state during excavations in the late 19th century.
The home, believed to have been constructed in the second century BC, has reopened after years of complex restoration work.
It's no mean feat to restore a home that's been buried under volcanic debris for centuries upon centuries.
But they did beautiful work:
Details within the house are at times simply breathtaking (those frescos are thousands of years old!):
