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Miseno
The specific ruins she was groaning about are a theater, at one time an amphitheater with the spectator seats—row upon row—set in the side of the cliff overlooking the outer harbor of the port—now called "Lake Miseno," such that the spectators had their backs to the hillside and, beyond the cliff, the water. Of course, we couldn't see any of that because the concave recess that was once the amphitheater is full of modern houses, some of which actually incorporate Roman masonry. We were actually in the manmade cavern beneath the theater, a passageway running the perimeter of the semicircular structure above and—two-thousand years ago—allowing entrance from the waterfront, itself. In order to get in there, we walked through someone's front yard and down some stairs by the driveway and garage. (Presumably a concession the owner has to make to the Ministry of Culture for being permitted to have his bathroom take up aisle IV, seats XII through XXVI.) Part of the problem—no, all of the problem—is that very little of this was discovered until the 1960s, when overbuilding went absolutely wild, what with everyone wanting to ride the Italian economic miracle to the outskirts and live high up overlooking the bay where, yea, brave Ulysses sailed, and only a few hundred yards from where some of the juiciest parts in The Aeneid are supposed to have played out. Archaeologists have discovered and excavated what is
left of a sacello (a small shrine, see photo,
above) built to Caesar Augustus, but any appreciation
of that, as well, has to contend with adjacent
apartments. Certainly, in an area of Italy with
abundant and open displays of ancient Rome, such as
Pompeii and Herculaneum, and even ancient Greece, such
as Cuma and Paestum, it is strange to prop yourself up
against a bus-stop so you can try to shoot around the
rubbish bin for a good shot of a shrine to the
emperor.
(See related article on the
Serino aqueduct that supplied this area.) to portal index for
archaeology to portal for Underground
Naples |
The woman next to me was complaining
that "the ruins we saw in Libya are much better
preserved than these." We were standing in what
amounts to ruins of ruins of ruins at Miseno, at the
extreme western end of the Gulf of Naples, in the
middle of what used to be 
Relatively
unspoiled, however, and high at the top of the cliff
over the bay is the Cento Camarelle— the One
Hundred Little Rooms— (entrance in photo, right) a
group of cisterns arranged on two levels oriented at
right-angles to each other. Whether or not there are
really one-hundred chambers, I don't know, but the
entire labyrinth is impressive and cut out of the tuff
of the cliff. The passageways between the individual
cisterns are narrow and none of the entire affair is
for the claustrophobic. The walls are still plastered
with the waterproof plaster called cocciopesto
and there are graffiti on those walls from those who
have visited before you. One I saw was from "1737".
Besides the two accessible levels, there is evidence
of another one even deeper. The great Neapolitan
archaeologist,