Graffiti News

A theatre corridor preserves everyday communication

Researchers have identified 79 previously unrecorded graffiti in a passage between two theatres at Pompeii, near Naples in southern Italy. According to CBC.ca, the international Bruits de couloir, or Corridor Whispers, project conducted fieldwork in 2022 and 2025, also rereading about 300 inscriptions already known on the walls. The discoveries expand the record of informal communication in a city buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The passage connected the Teatro Grande, associated with Greek-style drama, and the smaller Odeion, used for music and recitations. Audiences passed through during breaks. Traders, soldiers, enslaved people and citizens also used the space. Its walls carried jokes, insults, declarations of affection and drawings: marks made in a place people crossed during ordinary activities.

Louis Autin and Éloïse Letellier-Taillefer of Sorbonne University in Paris co-ordinated the project, with Marie-Adeline Le Guennec, a professor of ancient Roman history at the Université du Québec à Montréal. An observation about similarities between theatre graffiti and marks in working-class accommodation helped turn the corridor into a study of popular communication.

Changing the light makes faint marks readable

Reflectance Transformation Imaging, or RTI, allowed the researchers to examine scratches that were difficult to distinguish with the naked eye. The method photographs a surface dozens of times with light coming from different directions. Researchers can then adjust virtual illumination on a computer to inspect details in the surface. CBC.ca reports that some marks had previously been dismissed as random scratches.

The team worked inside the corridor at night with an acquisition dome made by the French firm Mercurio Imaging. Artificial intelligence was not used in this analysis. The distinction matters because the recovery depended on examining surviving physical marks, rather than generating an imagined version of what a wall might once have shown.

For people who follow street art, the process offers a useful reminder about looking. The most visible image is only part of a wall's record. Small incisions and overlapping marks can also carry information, even when their meaning needs careful interpretation.

Love and drawings record unequal lives

The graffiti preserve traces of people who are less visible in grand houses and formal historical records. One newly identified inscription expresses love for someone named Erato. Le Guennec told CBC.ca that the writer's name has been lost, leaving the declaration incomplete. She also identified working-class slang in the wording.

Le Guennec explained that Erato was among the names given to enslaved people and used by freed people. That context provides a clue, without establishing a complete biography for the person addressed. A surviving name cannot supply the missing author's identity or settle everything about the relationship.

Other subjects include gladiator combat, portraits, animals, ships and sexual imagery. Le Guennec connects sexual symbols in Roman culture with prosperity and fertility. She also notes that women appear in inscriptions but rarely as the subjects of posthumous tributes, and even more rarely as authors, reflecting differences in access to education.

Pompeii archaeologist Giuseppe Scarpati relates the ship drawings to the city's ancient setting closer to the coastline. For a street-art audience, that connection between an image and its surroundings is especially useful: the wall records what people encountered as well as what they wanted to say.

A planned digital platform extends access

The research team plans to launch a public digital platform in June, combining photogrammetry of the corridor, high-resolution RTI data and the complete inscription record, according to CBC.ca. The report describes a forthcoming resource; it does not establish that the platform is already available or give opening arrangements for visiting the corridor itself.

More than 10,000 graffiti have been recorded across Pompeii. Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director general of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, considers the corridor an important place for filling gaps in knowledge of the ancient world. Its value lies partly in bringing ordinary activity into view alongside the city's more monumental remains.

Ancient inscriptions and contemporary street art belong to different social settings. Looking at both can nevertheless sharpen attention to who leaves a mark, what surrounds it and whose voice survives. Explore public-facing work around you on the Wallscape map.

Source: CBC.ca