Also outside the main excavation area and beyond the Villa of Diomedes is the magnificent Villa of the Mysteries (Villa dei Misteri). 

Your ticket includes admission here. This villa, built in the second century BC, contains what many consider to be the finest surviving ancient wall paintings, preserved in all the brilliance of their original colors. 

The most remarkable of these is a frieze 17 meters long in the large triclinium, so large that its figures are almost life-size.

 It is thought that the villa had been converted into a Dionysian cult meeting place, and the scenes in these paintings show followers engaged in the mysteries of initiation