Tempio di Serapide (Macellum)
Pozzuoli
KnownHistory & archaeology
The story
Not a temple but the ancient Roman market: on the marble columns the holes bored by marine molluscs tell how much the Flegrean ground has risen and sunk over the centuries.
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More gems in Pozzuoli
History & archaeologyAnfiteatro Flavio
Pozzuoli
The third largest Roman amphitheatre, at Pozzuoli: above ground the tiers, but it is underground that it strikes you, in the intact passages from which the beasts rose.
Nature & hikingSolfatara
Pozzuoli
The ground breathes: hissing fumaroles, mud that boils up and a smell of sulphur reminding you how alive the earth is beneath the Campi Flegrei.
History & archaeologyRione Terra
Pozzuoli (NA)
On the acropolis of Pozzuoli, evacuated in 1970 because of bradyseism, the Rione Terra guards beneath its houses an intact Roman town of streets, workshops and paved hinges.
Nature & hikingLago d'Averno
Pozzuoli (NA)
In the extinct crater of a volcano, the still waters of Averno: for the ancients the threshold of the underworld, the one Aeneas crossed to descend into the kingdom of shadows.
VolcanoesMonte Nuovo
Pozzuoli (NA)
Born in a single night from a sixteenth-century eruption, the youngest mountain of the Campi Flegrei holds within its crater a green silence looking out over the gulf of Pozzuoli.
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.