What Was Daily Life Like for the Women Who Lived in Ancient Pompeii 2,000 Years Ago?
A new exhibition is spotlighting the women who have long been sidelined in histories of the Roman Empire—from mothers and weavers to entrepreneurs and influential tavern owners
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Like all women of their time, Asellina and Zmyrina could not vote. But they found influence in their own ways.
Asellina owned a popular thermopolium on a bustling corner of ancient Pompeii, where her three assistants doled out food, drink and political endorsements to customers. A sign on the door above the tavern weighed in on an upcoming election for aedile, a type of city official in charge of public buildings: “The girls of Asellina urge you to vote for Gaius Lollius Fuscus as aedile. And Zmyrina is one of them.”
Buried in debris from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E., places like Asellina’s thermopolium preserve Pompeii as it was just before tragedy struck. In these ancient Roman stories, however, women have long been relegated to secondary actors in the shadow of ambitious men like Gaius Lollius Fuscus.
“Being a Woman in Ancient Pompeii,” a new exhibition at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, centers women of all ages and social classes in the story of the doomed city. To that end, the exhibition begins with women’s names and faces, an attempt to humanize lives that began and ended in a past so distant it can feel mythical.
“One of the most significant aims of the show was to reconstruct the personalities and activities of the women who lived in the city,” Francesca Ghedini, an archaeologist at the University of Padua and a co-curator of the exhibition, tells Artnet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred.
After centuries of excavations, the exhibition’s organizers have much to work with, ranging from ancient graffiti scrawled on the walls of private houses to the two nearly life-size statues of a man and woman that were discovered earlier this year, per a statement. Some experts think this woman may have been a priestess, who “held unusual levels of power for women” in the Roman world, as Emily Hauser, a classicist at the University of Exeter, writes in the Conversation.
But for many women, life was constrained by social expectations starting at an early age. To prepare for marriage, Roman girls ended their schooling earlier than boys. Fathers began picking viable husbands when their daughters were as young as 12, according to the exhibition guide.
The cycle of motherhood began again rapidly as women reentered the domestic sphere. In the Roman household, women were in charge of educating children, supervising enslaved workers and managing household finances. Frescoes illuminate women’s daily rituals like hairstyling, while objects like a speculum, forceps and children’s toys suggest the central role of motherhood.
Despite these duties and constraints, women spent leisure time spinning and weaving, as an abundance of spindles, whorls and bobbins shows. Some managed to elevate themselves into positions of greater economic and social independence.
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Julia Felix, for instance, inherited the large house—and business instincts—of her father, Spurius. When an earthquake shattered Pompeii’s Stabian Baths in 62 C.E., Felix offered her private bathhouse and extra rooms to paying customers. Archaeologists know this due to a rental notice still intact on the outside of her house, which also featured wall-to-wall frescoes, lush gardens and a private water supply.
Another daughter who forged her own path was Eumachia. Born to a prominent amphorae producer, Eumachia married a wealthy landowner whose flocks of sheep allowed her to begin an independent career as a wool processor. Accumulating her own fortunes, Eumachia became one of the few women to finance a major public building in central Pompeii.
The exhibition also bears witness to the women who lived on the fringes of Roman society, including the city’s nearly 100 sex workers, and women like Clodia Nigella, a pig-keeper who likely raised swine for sacrificial rituals.
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Its focus then shifts to the more recent past, highlighting the role that women played in the excavation, documentation and preservation of Pompeii as an archaeological site.
For instance, Caroline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon, first became enamored with Pompeii when she toured the site in 1808 as the new queen of Naples. She supported and funded the ambitious plans of Michele Arditi, the director of excavations, while also contributing her own ideas for Pompeii. She suggested using French army troops to excavate the boundaries of the ancient city, publish a monthly periodical and assign ordered street and building designations, an idea that was never adopted in her lifetime but received widespread archaeological acclaim when a later director embraced it.
The exhibition also spotlights Olga Elia, born in 1902 in nearby Nocera Inferiore, who rose through the ranks as an archaeologist to become director of excavations in Pompeii in 1940.
Taken together, the exhibition argues, these ancient and contemporary women don’t just illuminate the story of Pompeii—they are central to its story.
“Being a Woman in Ancient Pompeii” is on view at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii through January 31, 2026.
