Roman Baths of Pozzuoli
Book for the Pozzuoli spa!
The Neronensis Complex is located in the Municipality of Pozzuoli, a city in the Campania region in the province of Naples that overlooks the sea, in the Gulf of Pozzuoli.
The city is nestled in a wonderful landscape and is the capital of the Campi Flegrei.
The Campi Flegrei are a mythical place of antiquity, which has represented in history a great beacon of civilization and progress. In the ancient world it has known the Etruscans, the Samnites, the Cumaeans, the Romans, and later the dominations and kingdoms that have followed one another over the centuries.
This place was defined by the Romans, both in the Republican and Imperial ages, "the little Rome" (Roma Parvula) as it was, after the Capital, the favorite destination of statesmen, men of letters and Roman emperors.
Its charm, even after the fall of the Empire, has inspired great poets and men of letters, such as Virgil and Cicero; in the medieval and Renaissance era Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio; in the nineteenth century it was the favorite destination of the Grand Tour, where the European aristocracy and its great men of letters, including Goethe, were inspired to rediscover the roots of the history of humanity, the bibliography is rich in interest not only literary but also pictorial (Giacinto Diano), musical (Sacchini, Pergolesi) and artistic (Rocco Barocco, Sofia Loren).
Some historical notes
Few places in the Mediterranean seem, like the Campi Flegrei, to play a leading role in the drama of History. This land has a terrible character because the countless eruptions, since the most ancient ages, had scattered a multitude of craters between Vesuvius and the mouth of the Clanis (Liternum, Lago Patria). Looking at the landscape of craters broken and filled by the sea and lakes, by the earth and the sea water, he suggested to the Greeks to give it the name of “burning lands” (Campi Flegrei). And here they located some of their most ancestral myths, in its bowels there were the Giants, buried here by Zeus after the king of the gods had won the rebellion in a fierce war that the Greeks placed at the origin of the history of the last era of the world. They attributed the terrifying earthquakes to the terrible shaking of their bodies lying defeated but not tamed. Here was the forge of Hephaestus. It is here that there was the entrance to Hades and the swamp of Acheron (Lake Fusaro), it is here that the Cocytus and the Pyriphlegethon (rivers of Hades) feed the Avernus. It is here that Cerberus (three-headed dog) lived, guardian of Hades. It is here that Ulysses and Aeneas came to evoke, with blood rites, the shades of their loved ones, participants in the spark of the gods, to know their future. It is here that the sirens flattered the sailors, including Parthenope. It is here that the Eubeans through the Ecisti (leaders designated by the people to colonize a new land) Megasthenes of Chalcis and Hippocles of Cuma of Euboea founded the mythical Cuma that dominated our lands and welcomed the refugees of Samos (compatriots of Pythagoras) who, to escape the cruel tyrant Polycrates, came here to found Dicearchia (the city of the just), the first founding nucleus of the city of Pozzuoli.
It is here that the Latin alphabet (Chalcidic-Cuman alphabet) originated, with which the whole world, still today, is able to communicate through writing, words and thoughts. It is here that Daedalus, after having built the labyrinth, fled from Minos and, after losing his son Icarus, laid down his wings and dedicated them to Apollo. For this dedication to the god he made his architectural genius available by building a large temple dedicated to him on the sacred road of Cuma.
But power changed over the centuries and dominations were replaced by other dominations, from the Etruscans to the Cumaeans to the Samnites (Campania) up to the new rulers of the world: the Romans. These attributed to the Phlegraean Fields and in particular to Pozzuoli a dominant role from a military (classis micenensis) and commercial point of view (the entire traffic of goods from the East to Rome). For five centuries the function of Puteoli became crucial for the expansion of Rome. Here in the “ripa Puteolana” (the port) passed grain from Sicily and Egypt, wine and oil from Greece, wool, silk, carpets and fine fabrics from Asia, wood from Africa, spices and pearls from Arabia and India, honey, silver and sauces from Spain, marble, precious stones and slaves from all over the ancient world.
And with trade also passed culture and religion. Here, in the largest port of the Roman Empire, the commercial communities of Alexandrians, Syrians, Arabs, Jews who placed their agencies were based. Statius (Roman literary poet) said that Pozzuoli was the "Coast that hosts the world". A cosmopolitan city with a thousand languages and a thousand customs among Greek, Egyptian (Serapis), Nabatean (Dusares) sanctuaries, the Semitic Baals of Heliopolis, Damascus, the magna mater of Pessinunte (Turkey) Cybele, Yahweh of the Jews in whose community the Christian message was grafted that Saint Paul, landing in 61 AD in Pozzuoli, set out to bring to the heart of the empire: Rome. The great banks of Cluvio puteolanus and Vestorius prospered, the great families who managed international business, the families in the Annuii, of the Calpurnii, contractors of the port taxes of the Red Sea, pushed as far as Tepropane (today's Ceylon), founding the first embassy of that kingdom in Rome during the period of the emperor Claudius, technology prospered, glass (glass from Odemira present in the museums of Prague and Lisbon), variants of the Egyptian frit (sand, malachite, calcium carbonate and sodium), perfumes, metallurgical technology, medicine (litharge and ceruse).
Here Caesar Augustus emperor emerged from the bloody upheaval of the civil wars elevated Puteoli to the rank of "colony Julia Augusta" found his true home and his peace. And it is here that every summer the “classiss alexandrina” transported through four/five hundred ships with one hundred and thirty thousand tons of grain which constituted less than half of what Rome consumed in a year, to whose citizens Augustus promised free grain.