This is the first of three volumes which offer a detailed analysis of one of the major city-blocks of ancient Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Excavated between 1926 and 1932, the Insula of Menander is so named after the structure that occupies over half the block's total area of 3,500 square metres, the House of the Menander, one of the grandest mansions of the city. Other, smaller houses, notably the House of the Lovers and the House of the Craftsmen, occupy outlying parts, and a number of shops and apartments are interspersed among them. The purpose of the present volume is to document a complete survey of the architecture of the block and thus trace the structural history of the Insula, with its intricate pattern of changing property-boundaries, over the 250-300 years of its existence.