Sealed Pompeii Wardrobe Yields a Child’s Charm Necklace and a Tiny Perfume Bottle

Archaeologists in Pompeii have opened a wooden wardrobe that stayed sealed for almost 2,000 years and found everyday belongings inside, including makeup tools, a perfume bottle, coins and a child’s necklace, The Guardian reported.

The wardrobe stood in a room of a home on Via dell’Abbondanza, one of the busiest streets of the ancient Roman city before Mount Vesuvius destroyed it in A.D. 79. The contents offer a close look at ordinary life there.

What was inside the wardrobe

According to The Guardian, the wardrobe held tweezers, a small glass perfume bottle, an incense burner and a bronze lantern. It also contained cooking pots, 38 bronze coins and a wooden box with lead weights. The weights suggest that someone in the household worked as a tradesperson.

The most striking object was a necklace with more than 20 small charms made from different materials. The charms represent several deities, among them the gods Bes and Mercury.

This type of necklace is called a crepundia and was traditionally worn by children. Its charms rattled, which helped parents keep track of a child, and they could also help identify the child.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii archaeological park, said the object had a special purpose. In his words, it could remind a child of parents who might live far away, and it fit a society whose people were often displaced and carried personal items with them as they moved around the Mediterranean.

Zuchtriegel also said that leaving money and personal belongings behind could point to the owners having to flee the eruption at short notice.

In a storage area of the home, archaeologists also found the fragmented skeletons of two mice inside an amphora.

How the house came to light

• A.D. 79: Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Pompeii.
• 1912: The facade of the house is first excavated.
• Now: Experts are working on some of its rooms as part of a wider restoration project. The home was earlier linked to a person called Cornelius Maximus because of inscriptions that are no longer visible.

Excavations in Pompeii regularly turn up new finds. The Guardian noted that a large thermal bath complex, thought to have been used by its owner to impress wealthy guests, was found in 2025 in a home on Via di Nola, in a wealthy district known as Regio IX. In 2023, a home with a cramped bakery was found in the same district. Enslaved people are believed to have been imprisoned there and made to produce bread.

Why it matters: seeing the people behind the ruins

Large buildings and grand frescoes tell one part of the story of Pompeii. Small objects such as a child’s rattling necklace, a perfume bottle and a tradesperson’s weights show how ordinary residents lived, worked and cared for their families. The coins and belongings left in the wardrobe also hint at how suddenly the eruption forced people out, although Zuchtriegel framed this as a possibility rather than a certainty.

What comes next

Work continues at the Villa of the Mysteries in a suburb of Pompeii, which first came to light in the early 20th century and has never been completely excavated. Zuchtriegel said the team wants to finish the job.

The current dig is not in the part of the villa where the owners lived, where great frescoes might be expected, but in the servants’ quarters. He said the hope is to learn more about the daily life and economy of people who stood in the shadow of history, since most of the villa’s inhabitants were servants.

Around Prague, based on reporting by The Guardian