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Pozzuoli
These two items appeared separately in the Around Naples Encyclopedia on the dates indicated and have been consolidated here onto a single page. entry July 2003
Pozzuoli
The Rione Terra, the old part of
Pozzuoli Quite another case is nearby Pozzuoli, just north of Naples. It is so worn down by 2,500 years, so overlaid with bits and pieces of successive civilizations, that it is virtually impossible for the casual observer to recognize it as the important city of the ancient world that it was. Excavations are now going on and, ultimately, plans call for a museum, guided tours, and the wherewithal to help you appreciate ancient Pozzuoli, just as you do its Vesuvian cousins to the south. The project entails excavating and restoring a 200 x 240 meter area of the Rione Terra, the old city. Indeed an ambitious project. The city was founded in the middle of the sixth
century b.c. by settlers from Greece. Like those who
founded nearby Cuma and
Parthenope (Naples) in those days along the same
coast, these settlers also chose a strategic
promontory for their city. They named their new home Dicaearchia
("Just Government"), a poetic name, presumably making
a point about the place they had fled, the island of
Samos, ruled by the tyrant Polycrates. As yet,
archaeology has uncovered only the most fragmentary
physical evidence of this ancient Greek city.
Dicaearchia probably went into decline as its powerful
neighbour, Cuma, became more and more powerful. This
idea is supported by the Greek historian Strabo, who,
in the first century before Christ, referred to the
city (renamed Putèoli by the Romans) as
a "fortress raised on a cliff" and as a "port of
Cuma". Around the year 300 b.c. much of the Campania area, including Pozzuoli, came under the domination of the Samnites, the mortal enemies of the Romans, who ruled south-central Italy. The Romans prevailed against Samnium and later against the Carthaginian, Hannibal, who lay siege to Pozzuoli in 215. Putèoli became a Roman colony in 194 b.c. It is under the Romans that Putèoli comes into its own. (Putèoli was Latin for "little wells," referring to the many sulfur fumaroles in the area. It has given modern Italian the term pozzilli, the diminutive of "wells" and the name Pozzuoli for the city. The popular idea that the name of the city comes from a similar Latin word, puteo, meaning "smell," is cute, but wrong.) Cicero calls Putèoli "little Rome", and Seneca tells us that it was a world port, receiving fleets from around the Mediterranean, and, in turn, acting as a channel for Campanian exports such as wrought iron, marble, mosaics and blown glass. On his way to Rome, the Apostle Paul, himself, landed at Putèoli, where he was welcomed by the Jewish community.
The main and transverse
axes measure 149 and 116 meters, respectively. The
structure could accommodate from 35,000 to 40,000
spectators. The spaces beneath the floor of the
arena are still well-preserved and here it is
possible to see what complicated mechanisms were
required to put on Roman spectacles of the period.
The elliptical corridor is flanked by a series of
low cellae set
on two floors and having trap-doors that open to the
arena. The cellae
on the upper floor were destined to hold the
cages of the wild animals used in the games. The
cages would be hoisted through the trap-doors
towards the outside letting the animals spring
immediately from darkness into the bright-light of
the arena with an effect that one can well imagine. [Also see this miscellaneous item.]
The fortunes of Putèoli declined, of course, with those of the Roman Empire. Before the arrival of the Normans at the turn of the millennium and the subsequent foundation of the Kingdom of Naples, Pozzuoli was part of the little known Duchy of Naples. Its physical fortunes eroded further over the centuries: shifting coastlines and constant earth tremors care nothing for the hard times they may be preparing for future archaeologists. Severe seismic activity had so weakened the ancient buildings of the Rione Terra that the area was almost entirely evacuated in 1970.
Recent exhibits have been in the Palazzo di Fraja, in a section of the building that once actually incorporated a Roman taberna, a shop, into its own structure, thus hiding it for centuries. It has been partially cleared and restored and is one of two such tabernae uncovered since the present excavations began. The taberna is situated near what is now believed to be the intersection of the main cross-roads of the old center of Roman Putèoli. The exhibit displays approximately 200 items, ranging from ceramic items to statuary. The Rione Terra of Pozzuoli looks somewhat
like a ghost town these days, due to the evacuation
and, now, the burrowing and scraping away going on.
Yet, this inconvenience to modern residents is a
blessing for archaeologists, since they are now free
to probe in and under Strabo's "fortress raised on a
cliff" in their attempts to peel away the centuries. Jan. 13, 2010
Reopening the Cathedral(A kind gentleman at a small library in Pozzuoli today informed me that the newly restored cathedral (duomo) would be “inaugurated in a few days.” He wasn’t too sure what that meant. After more than a decade of planning and rebuilding, the church (destroyed by fire in 1967) would officially reopen, but after that? The duomo is in the oldest part of Pozzuoli, the old city, the Rione terra, a 200 x 240 meter area atop a tufa promontory over the bay. It has been deserted since 1970 when seismic activity forced evacuation of the area.  Current
restoration
has produced a good museum at the entrance to the area
and, now, the duomo. The rest of the area is in ruins.
There is one road in and the same road out. There is
little sidewalk space and such things as emergency exits
in the restored Duomo—according to recent newspaper
accounts—do not meet the standards they must if the
church is really to serve as a place of worship.
Ideally, you would have the museum at one end and the
duomo at the other; the buildings in between would be
bustling with those who serve the Grand Tourists of
today. That is not likely to happen any time soon.
Pozzuoli was hard hit by the earth tremors of the 1980s,
followed by a time when all available resources were
channeled into building a satellite town of New
Pozzuoli, resettling evacuees, etc. Culture was not a
priority. Yet, Pozzuoli and environs include the Phlegrean Fields, Greek and
Roman archaeology (with the large Pozzuoli
amphitheater), and the adjacent
area of Baia, now itself a separate center of
antiquities covered by the term National Archaeological
Museum of Baia. The area offers a lot.
[See also The Roman Port of Pozzuoli] to history portal
to archaeology
portal |
Adjacent, as it was, to
the mighty port for the Western imperial fleet at
Miseno, built by Caesar Augustus, Putèoli was
a leading commercial center and cosmopolitan city of
the Roman world. Even before recent excavations
within the Rione Terra, Putèoli's importance
was evident from the ruins of the third largest
amphitheater in Italy (photo, left). The start of
construction has been placed during the reign of
Vespasian (69-79); construction was paid for by the
population of Pozzuoli in honor of the emperor in
return for his donations to the city for having
sided with him in his battle against Vitellius.
Pozzuoli also has remnants of baths, a
vast necropolis, and columns from the ancient Temple
of Augustus (originally a temple for the worship of
Jupiter and later incorporated into the Cathedral of
San Procolo). Near the harbor, also, there stands what
is still erroneously called the "Temple of Serapis,"
(photo, left). Apparently, it was really a market
place. Now on dry land, the bases of the columns were
underwater until the 1980s, when significant seismic
activity shifted the ground level. (This is discussed
in detail in a section of the entry on 
The goal of present
excavations (photo, right) is to unearth the Roman
city of Putèoli, including, of course, the main
street, the decumanus maximus, and the area
around the remnant columns of the Temple of Augustus.
The digs are snaking their way back from the entrance
of the exhibit through a honeycomb of Roman ruins,
only a small portion of which are, as yet, part of the
display. Although no new physical bits of Decaearchia
have been found, plenty of Putèoli has.
Fragments, for example, in a totally burned-out
section near ground level have been dated to the first
century a.d.; archaeologists speculate that a
disastrous fire may have been caused by the very
seismic upheaval that presaged the eruption of
Vesuvius that buried Pompeii.