The Villa of the Mysteries stands 400 meters northwest of Pompeii's town walls. It sits between Via Delle Tombe and Via Superiore, two roads lined with funerary monuments leading to the Herculaneum Gate.
Archaeologists found a bronze seal naming L. Istacidius Zosimus, a freedman of the powerful Istacidii family who may have owned the villa or overseen reconstruction after the earthquake of 62 AD. Some historians suggest Livia, wife of Augustus, was a previous owner based on a statue discovered inside.
Aurelio Item uncovered the site between 1909 and 1910 during an excavation conducted by Giuseppe Spano. Amadeo Maiuri carried out deeper investigations from 1929 to 1930 following state expropriation.
Room 5 contains true frescoes in the Second Style dated approximately 70-60 BC that most scholars interpret as showing initiation into the Dionysian Mysteries. Female followers known as maenads appear dancing with swirling drapery throughout the scenes alongside creatures like Silenus playing lyres or panpipes.
Two women and a child were found buried in lower pumice eruption layers within the villa's upper floor while six bodies including one girl near the entrance appeared in higher pyroclastic layers indicating survival of initial catastrophe phases. Plaster casts recorded their positions as they lay during early stages of Mount Vesuvius' explosive eruption.