Illustration
A view of the millstones and oven of a bakery (Pistrinium) in the Roman town of Pompeii which was buried in volcanic ash following the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. The millstones have square sockets in which wooden beams would have been placed and harnessed to mules in order to turn the stones and so grind the grain for flour. Grain was poured into the top of the funnel shaped top stone which rotated around the fixed lower stone. The flour was collected at the base on lead sheets. The arched brick oven had a capacity for 80 loaves of bread.
License & Copyright
This image was first published on Flickr.
Original image by Penn State Libraries Pictures Collection. Uploaded by Mark Cartwright, published on 13 November 2012. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.
Related Images
The Bakery of Popidius Priscus in Pompeii
Roman Bronze Cooking Pot
Cooking Brazier (Eschara)
Cooking Hearth With Cover
De Re Coquinaria ('The Art of Cooking')
Ancient Egyptian Brewery and Bakery
Cite This Work
APA Style
Collection, P. S. L. P. (2012, November 13). A Pompeii Bakery. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/image/955/a-pompeii-bakery/
Chicago Style
Collection, Penn State Libraries Pictures. "A Pompeii Bakery." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified November 13, 2012. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/955/a-pompeii-bakery/.
MLA Style
Collection, Penn State Libraries Pictures. "A Pompeii Bakery." World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 13 Nov 2012. Web. 21 Feb 2025.
