Piscina Mirabilis
Bacoli (NA)
Hidden gemHistory & archaeology
The story
At Bacoli, forty-eight pillars hold up the vault of a Roman cistern dug into the tufo (volcanic tuff): the largest ever built, an underground cathedral that once quenched the Misenum fleet.
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free with booking
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 & archaeologyTerme 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: History & archaeology
History & archaeologyStatua del Nilo ("Corpo di Napoli")
Largo Corpo di Napoli
A river god reclining for centuries in a quiet square, whom Neapolitans call the Corpo di Napoli: he leans his bearded head among putti and a sphinx.
History & archaeologyCappella Pontano
Decumani
A small Renaissance temple on the decumanus, which the humanist Pontano had raised for his lost wife, still lined inside with Latin inscriptions dictated by his grief.
- History & archaeology
Sedile di Nilo
Decumani
On the corner of a small Spaccanapoli square survives the seat of the old Nilo quarter, where the nobles once gathered before the sedili of Naples vanished.
History & archaeologyPort'Alba
Napoli
A seventeenth-century arch cut into the walls leads to the booksellers' street, where stalls of second-hand volumes pile up among yellowed pages and the shade of the old city.
History & archaeologyPorta Capuana
zona Garibaldi
Between two cylindrical towers an arch of white marble opens like a Renaissance triumph, the old city gate facing the road to Capua.
- History & archaeology
MANN — Museo Archeologico Nazionale
P.za Museo
One of the world's great archaeological museums: here the Toro Farnese, the mosaics of Pompeii and the Gabinetto Segreto tell the whole ancient Mediterranean in a single visit.