Archaeologists uncover new frescoes at the Villa Poppaea near Pompeii, with traces of Egyptian blue

Italy’s Pompeii Archaeological Park announced in February 2026 that excavations at the Villa Poppaea, a Roman residence at Oplontis near Torre Annunziata, had revealed wall frescoes in exceptional condition with striking red, yellow and blue pigments. The finds include traces of a synthetic pigment known as Egyptian blue (Latin caeruleum aegyptium), generally considered the oldest artificially manufactured pigment in the world. The Villa Poppaea, buried in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, has traditionally been associated with Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of the Emperor Nero, although that ownership is not definitively confirmed.

The wall in question forms part of a hall that archaeologists have nicknamed the Hall of the Peacocks, after a pair of birds painted opposite one another. On other fragments curators have identified parts of a theatrical mask linked to the character Pappus from the so-called Atellan farce, a Roman comedy genre featuring stock characters. The frescoes are painted in the Second Pompeian Style (around 60-50 BC), known for its illusionistic architectural motifs, with trompe-l’oeil windows, doors and painted columns.

In methodological terms, during restoration work in the western part of the villa the archaeologists used reflectance spectroscopy in the visible and infrared parts of the spectrum, a technique that allows non-invasive identification of pigments. In this way, alongside Egyptian blue, they confirmed the use of cinnabar, an intense red pigment that in the Roman world was extremely expensive. The discovery was published on the website of the Pompeii Archaeological Park and in Archaeology Magazine, while part of the report was carried by Italy’s public broadcaster RAI.

What the find tells us about the Roman elite

The combination of these two pigments on a single wall, according to a comment by park director Gabriel Zuchtriegel to the Italian press, suggests that the owners of the villa had access to the most expensive materials of the period and the means to engage workshops of the highest skill. Cinnabar was mined at Almadén in present-day Spain, while Egyptian blue was industrially produced at Alexandria and Pozzuoli. According to the British Museum, the recipe for Egyptian blue was lost after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and was not fully reconstructed until the 19th century.

The Villa Poppaea was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2014, together with Pompeii, Herculaneum and Oplontis. It reopened to the public on 12 February 2026, which, together with the most recent excavations, has made part of the western wing accessible to visitors for the first time in decades. At the same time, the park announced that the new frescoes will not be moved from the site but conserved where they were found, in line with the methodological framework adopted by Italy’s Ministry of Culture in 2018.

The limits of the find are worth flagging. Dating the frescoes to the Second Pompeian Style relies on iconographic parallels with other surviving walls in Campania, but absolute dating of individual layers remains a matter for forthcoming analyses of the mortar and pigments. The identification of the Pappus character from the recovered fragments is based on the distinctive bald-crowned mask, but part of the face was missing at the time of excavation. The next excavation season is planned for the autumn of 2026, the park’s management said in its latest monthly bulletin.