Of the six houses in the Artists in Architecture programme, Casina Fiorelli remains the most enigmatic. Not least because it remains unclear who made the design and when exactly the building was erected. But it is also not entirely clear whether it served as a dwelling from the beginning and whether Giuseppe Fiorelli (1823-1896) himself ever lived there. After all, initially it was the place of work for the first generation of archaeologists who began to follow a scientific approach in excavating the site of Pompeii during the mid-nineteenth century. However, regardless of current scientific practices, the house was built within the boundaries of the archaeological site itself, on top of the foundations of a Roman atrium house which included original mosaic floors. For the visual artist and photographer Elena Mazzi in resid…
