Described by the landlady, Petronia Vallaris, as a rare find, it truly is -- a larger than normal apartment with five distinct rooms. Under any other circumstances it would have been three different apartments, adjoined to the shops below. Here, the apartments have been combined as a painters' workshop, formerly belonging to a prominent family, now on the rental market again. It is afforded light and air from precariously constructed balconies, the usual light well of the main house's atrium long since sealed off from the upper rooms.

Each room displays an example from the four periods of wall painting found in Herculaneum: the plain faux-marbles panels of what is called First Style; the elaborate perspectives of doors, columns, and friezes of Second Style; the more subdued panels and landscapes of Third Style; and the delicate, fantastical motifs of Fourth Style.

From within the city, you can tour the cenaculum with Vitalis by entering through the small door to the west (right) of the fauces of the House of the Bicentenary.

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