Most of what is known about how lararia actually looked comes from the cities buried by Vesuvius in 79 CE. Pompeii and Herculaneum preserve hundreds of examples across the whole social range: aedicula shrines like miniature temples raised in fine atria, arched niches cut into kitchen walls, and painted panels where the shrine was only an image. Their placement is itself evidence. Many stand in kitchens and service quarters, near the hearth, where the household's slaves did much of the daily tending.
The iconography is remarkably stable. Two Lares flank the scene in short belted tunics, dancing with drinking horns raised; between them stands the genius of the householder, togate and veiled, pouring a libation; below, one or two crested serpents glide toward a painted altar of offerings. The serpents are usually read as protective spirits of the place, and the eggs, pine cones and fruit painted on the altars record the kinds of offerings made in fact.
Harriet Flower's study of the Lares emphasizes what the paintings imply: a religion of place and household rather than of doctrine, renewed by small daily gestures rather than creeds. After the shrines fell out of use their form survived oddly well; the niche with its lamp and images has an afterlife in Mediterranean domestic devotion that any traveler can still recognize.