The name comes from the painting, no longer present, depicting Argus guarding Io, the nymph beloved by Zeus and turned into a heifer. Onto the large three-armed peristyle with stuccoed columns open the triclinium and other residential rooms and, on the western side, the passage through a second, smaller peristyle, whose columns are partly visible through the partially reopened Bourbon tunnels. The upper floor, lost after the open-air digs were abandoned in 1875, had small rooms used as a warehouse and facing the porticoed garden: here the excavators found an actual pantry, with flower and loaves ready to bake, as well as terra-cotta jars containing spelt, legumes, olives, almonds, and fruit.
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