The House
of the Faun covers 3,000square meters, an entire city
block. Its grandeur and elegance is extraneous to the mediocresurroundings of Campania,
but is rather comparable to the princely residence of Pellas
in Macedonia. It was built in
second century B.C., during the Samnite period; it takes its name from
the discovery of a small bronze statue (a dancing Faun)
in the atrium.In 1831 on
the exedra's pavement in the
first peristyle, an enormous mosaic (5.12 X 2.77 m.) picturing the
battle of Issos (333 B.C.)
between Alexander the Great
and Darius III of Persia. It
is probably the mosaic copy of a famous painting of the Greek painter Philossenos
(fourthcenturyB.C.); a million and a half tiles (tesseræ)
were needed for its execution.
The original mosaic is in the
National Archaeological Museum in Naples and it has recently
been reproduced with stones similar to the original ones (cut by a
special machine and then hand worked reducing the stone to tesseræ
of a millimeter and half) and
put back in the exedra of the house.
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