The Brilliant Blue Paint Covering This Lavish Room in Ancient Pompeii May Have Cost More Than Half the Annual Salary of a Roman Foot Soldier

Researchers have estimated how much the home’s owners may have paid to paint the small sacrarium, calculating the price of the Egyptian blue pigment and the hours of labor required to prepare it

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

March 18, 2026

Fifteen amphorae were found inside the Blue Room. Archaeological Park of Pompeii

In 2024, archaeologists announced that they’d excavated a small room inside a lavish home in ancient Pompeii. The space was likely a sacrarium, an area used to conduct rituals and store sacred objects, and its walls were covered with bright blue paint.

This particular pigment, known as Egyptian blue, was popular in the first century C.E., when Mount Vesuvius’ eruption preserved the ancient city in ash. It was also remarkably expensive. According to a new study published in the journal Heritage Science, the Blue Room’s paint job may have cost more than half the annual salary of a Roman foot soldier.

“The quality of the decoration is unbelievable. … It’s very rare, even unique, to find a completely blue sacrarium,” co-author Admir Masic, a chemist at the MIT, tells the London Times’ James Imam. “These owners were really very, very wealthy.”

The Blue Room is located within a large house near the city center, according to a 2024 statement from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. The large property featured a thermal bath, courtyard and large dining room. Inside the Blue Room, archaeologists also found 15 amphorae, bronze jugs and bronze lamps.

But the bright blue walls were particularly striking. Egyptian blue, the world’s oldest known synthetic pigment, was created in ancient Egypt around 5,000 years ago “as an alternative to the more expensive semi-precious lapis lazuli,” per the study. As Moujin Matin, an archaeologist at the University of Western Ontario, told Chemistry World’s Tom Metcalfe in 2025, “The production of Egyptian blue was a highly sophisticated process, made possible only within a well-developed cultural and technological context.”

By the first century B.C.E., Egyptian blue had spread to the Roman Empire. The Roman architect Vitruvius described the pigment, which he called caeruleum, in his treatise De Architectura. He wrote that the color was being produced in Puteoli, a city near Pompeii.

accent — The walls are decorated with female figures which may represent the seasons. Archaeological Park of Pompeii

“Egypt mania was rife, as the profusion of Egyptian blue shows,” co-author Marco Nicola, a pigment chemist at Turin University in Italy, tells the Times. “Blue had become a status symbol.”

For the new study, researchers wanted to determine exactly how much blue pigment was required for the paint job. They measured the amount of paint on the walls using multiscale X-ray microscopy, per a recent statement from the archaeological park. They concluded that the painters of the Blue Room had used between 6 and 11 pounds of pigment.

The researchers calculated the cost of the pigment using prices recorded by the Roman author Pliny the Elder. Priced at 11 denarii (Roman coins) per libra (around 0.72 pounds), the necessary pigment would have cost between 93 and 168 denarii.

Quick fact: The walls of the Blue Room

The room features ancient paintings of women (who may represent the four seasons), as well as images connected to sheep farming and agriculture, all against a blue backdrop.

“The cost of the [Egyptian blue] in the Blue Room was equivalent to roughly 744 to 1,344 loaves of bread,” write the researchers. “For further context, at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius, a Roman foot soldier would have been paid [around] 187 denarii per year, making our conservative estimate of pigment cost between 50 percent and 90 percent of this annual income.”

Painting the Blue Room didn’t only involve purchasing pigment. The home’s owners would have also had to pay for labor. The team turned to previous research by historian Francesca Bologna, who estimated that the Romans took nearly five minutes to grind around 0.25 ounces of pigment. At this rate, grinding the pigment required to paint the Blue Room would’ve taken 31 to 56 hours.

Egyptian blue has been found elsewhere in Pompeii. But according to the study, the fact that so much of the pigment was used in a “private shrine within a lavish domus” suggests that the owners were among Pompeii’s elite.

“This artistic practice aligns with broader trends in the Roman economy, where luxury pigments were used to signal status and cultural refinement,” write the researchers.

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