The House of the Faun covers nearly 3000 square metres and occupies an entire city block, or "insula". The house is based upon two magnificent colonnaded gardens or "peristyles", one Ionic and the other Doric. It also has two atriums, the Tuscan and the peristyle atrium. The focus of the decoration of the house, the Alexander mosaic, is placed on the central visual axis between the first and second peristyles, in a room referred to as an exedra. Mosaics on the floors of the peristyles evoke the flora and fauna of the Nile. The wall frescoes above these pavements is the largest surviving example of the false marble panelling characteristic of the