Castello di Baia
Bacoli (NA)
KnownCastles
The story
On the high promontory sheer above the gulf, the Aragonese castle guards the statues resurfaced from the submerged Roman city of the Campi Flegrei.
More gems in Bacoli
History & archaeologyAntro della Sibilla
Bacoli
A long trapezoidal corridor carved into the tufo (volcanic tuff), cut by blades of light, where Virgil imagined the Sibyl prophesying among the shadows of the rock.
History & archaeologyParco di Cuma
Bacoli
The oldest Greek colony in Italy, with the temples of Apollo and Jupiter stretched across the acropolis between pines and sea, where history begins in silence.
History & archaeologyCento Camerelle
Bacoli
A labyrinth of cisterns on two levels dug into the tufo (volcanic tuff), also called Carceri di Nerone, where Roman water ran beneath a villa facing the gulf.
In the water & divingParco Sommerso di Baia
Bacoli
A Roman city swallowed by the sea through bradyseism: mosaics, columns and statues visited from a glass-bottomed boat or with a mask.
- History & archaeology
Terme di Baia e Castello Aragonese (Museo Campi Flegrei)
Bacoli
Terraces of imperial baths descending towards the sea, and above them the Castello Aragonese guards the statues brought back up from the sunken Baia.
- History & archaeology
Tomba di Agrippina
Bacoli
Not a tomb at all but the remains of a small Roman theatre by the sea, tied by legend to Agrippina, mother of Nero, killed at Bauli.
More gems: Castles
- Castles
Palazzo Sansevero
P.za San Domenico Maggiore
On the corner of piazza San Domenico the palace of the princes of Sangro still carries the echo of the night when Gesualdo surprised and killed Maria d'Avalos and her lover.
CastlesCastel Capuano
zona Garibaldi
An old Norman castle that for four centuries served as the courthouse of Naples: here justice held session in frescoed halls, in the shadow of nearby Porta Capuana.
CastlesPalazzo Donn'Anna
Posillipo
The unfinished seventeenth-century palace juts sheer over the water, dark and labyrinthine: through its empty rooms legend has the shadow of Donn'Anna still wandering.
CastlesCasina Vanvitelliana
Lago Fusaro, Bacoli
An octagonal pavilion that seems to float on Lago Fusaro, a Bourbon hunting lodge reached by a little bridge, among reflections and morning mists.
CastlesVilla Lysis (Fersen)
Capri
Built in 1905 by the poet Fersen and dedicated to love and to sorrow, an Art Nouveau villa among the pines, with a Latin inscription at the entrance and the opium room hidden below.
CastlesPalazzo d'Avalos (ex carcere)
Terra Murata
First the palace of the d'Avalos family, then a prison until the late twentieth century: the empty cells command Terra Murata, suspended between the memory of the inmates and the silence that lives there now.