entry Mar 2009,
updates Apr 2016, Dec 2017, Dec. 2021
Bacoli,
The Baia Castle
& the Museum of the Flegrean Fields
<
distance side to side of this image is
about 55 km /34 miles
>
—added:
Dec. 2021.
A word about
Bacoli: When you read about the "sights to see in
Naples" you generally refer to the site itself
—Capri, Vesuvius, the Phlegrean (or Flegrean)
Fields, Pozzuoli, Ischia, Cuma, etc. but those
places are in, administratively, one town or
another; that is, Capri is a town, Vesuvius is
not; that is, Capri has a city hall; Vesuvius does
not. The Gulf of Naples has two bays: Naples
and Pozzuoli. The places ("sights to see") — the
Phlegrean Fields, the Baia Castle, Solfatara, Cape
Miseno, the Piscina Mirabilis, etc. are in
the Bay of Pozzuoli, in a town you've never heard
of —Bacoli. It's on Lake Fusaro. Population c.
27,000. It is the site of the popular Vanvitellian
Lodge (image, left), which hosts art
shows, a film festival, etc. (The red pin-drop in
the above image.) You see the large island of
Ischia on the left and the cone of Mt. Vesuvius on
the right.
It's
difficult imagine another place in Europe
that has as many items of archaeological,
historical, mythological and even geological
interest in such a compact area as the western end
of the Gulf of Naples. The Baia castle (a
fortress, really — image, below) sits
above all this and houses the new Museum of the
Phlegrean Fields (the Campi
Flegrei).
The castle is almost at the western end of
the gulf, just before Cape Miseno; it is a stone’s
throw from Cuma, the first
permanent Greek colony on the Italian mainland and
is surrounded by the submerged ruins of the great
Portus Julius, home
port to the Imperial Roman western fleet, now
partially viewable (from glass-bottom boats or
with diving gear) in an underwater archeology
park. As well, there are many surface relics of
the Roman empire in the form of villas, temples and cisterns
scattered throughout the area. The castle also
overlooks the waters where Virgil
tells us that Misenus, master of the sea-horn —the
conch-shell— challenged the sea-god Triton to
musical battle, and it is near Lake Averno, the
mythological entrance to Hell. Geologically, the
castle has a bird’s-eye view of Monte Nuovo (New
Mountain) the result of an eruption in 1538.
Amongst all that, the Baia castle seems
almost an afterthought; yet, it was for centuries
(between 1500 and the unification of Italy in
1861) an important defensive bulwark along the
coastal approaches to Naples, the capital of the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies. The fortress extends over 45,000
sq. meters and reaches a height of 94 meters above
the sea. The structure is somewhat of an
architectural hodge-podge. It was built by the
then ruling —but fading— dynasty of the Kingdom of
Naples, the Aragonese,
in the 1490s in preparation to defend against
imminent invasion by the forces of Charles VIII of
France. It is on the site of a villa traditionally
thought to have belonged to Julius Caesar,
himself, but now thought to have been Nero's.
After the new Spanish dynasty took over in the
early 1500s, the fortress was expanded greatly
under viceroy Toledo.
That expansion was actually a rebuilding since the
above-mentioned eruption caused great damage to
the fortress as well. It was expanded again under
the Bourbons in the
late 1700s.
Besides
being one of the fortresses that protected
the Gulf of Naples, the Baia
Castle also had other functions —diplomatic,
cultural, scientific and even penal; it hosted
visitors to the kingdom and served as a base under
the Spanish for early studies of volcanism in the
entire area of the Campi Flegrei; it was also the
site of grisly executions.
After
the unification of Italy, the fortress no longer
served a true military role and was officially
“demoted” in 1887. (That is, it was no longer
classified as a working defensive fortification on
the Italian coasts.) A military orphanage was
opened on the premises in 1927 with the aim of
providing for the children of soldiers who had
fallen in WWI. Industrial development in the area
both before and after WWII left the Baia castle
pretty much neglected. For a while, after the
earthquake of 1980, castle premises also served as
a shelter for those displaced from their homes.
In
1993 the Superintendency of Archaeology finally
got hold of the castle and opened the nucleus of
what is now the Archaeological Museum of the Campi
Flegrei. In its current state, the museum is
already an impressive display both outdoors and
inside, in three stories of the northwest tower of
the castle, dedicated not just to the history of
the castle, but to the wealth of archaeological
material within the entire area of the Campi
Flegrei, including the larger-than-life sculptural
ensembles of the Sacellum of the Augustals. (A sacellum was
a small Roman temple; the Augustals
were a Roman priestly class; a display of plinths
from the sacellum at Miseno is on display at the
Baia museum, and an entire room is given over to a
reconstruction of the temple facade. This sacellum
was discovered in 1968 in the waters off of Punta
Sarparella, a few hundred meters up the coast from
the castle.) As well, another room contains a
reconstruction of the nymphaeum found submerged
off of nearby Punta Epitaffio in 1969—that is, a
rectangular grotto shrine with a series of statues
commissioned by the emperor Claudius, himself,
including two, Ulysses and a companion, that
recreate a scene from The Odyssey. Another room
contains the "plaster casts from Baia," a
collection of hundreds of fragments of plasterwork
discovered in 1954 and evidence of large-scale
Roman copying of original Greek bronze statues.
Eventually, the museum will cover 44 rooms on the
premises of the castle.
The
best short guide to the area is Baia: the castle,
museum and archaeological sites,
published by the Soprintendenza per i beni archeologici
di Napoli e Caserta, editor Electa,
Napoli (2003). Electa graphics are always good;
the Italian text by Paola Miniero is also good;
and the English translation by Mark Weir, as
usual, is spectacular.
update: Apr, 2016 -
added Dec, 2017 -See this entry for news of this new guide to the underwater archaeological park of Baia.
(FEDERPARCHI)
The Italian Federation of Parks and Nature Reserves
The Italian Federation of Parks and Nature Reserves (FEDERPARCHI) was founded in 1989 and is one of 160 bodies that manage national and regional parks, marine protected areas, and regional and state nature reserves. In 2008 Federparchi also became the Italian Section of the Europarc Federation. It works in close coordination with other similar groups such as the Italian Environmental League.
Under the rubric “A Sea of Culture”, at its 10th annual iteration in Florence, both of these groups have recognized the combined "protected marine reserves” in the gulf of Naples for their efforts to coordinate efforts in order to promote tourism and to afford more efficient protection of the areas involved. As noted in more detail at marinepark.php:
...The Campania region of Italy has six "protected marine reserves.” Four of them are directly in the Gulf of Naples: the reserve at Punta Campanella (at the end of the Sorrentine peninsula); the underwater park at Baia (on the western side of the Bay of Pozzuoli, the bay across from Procida), the underwater park of Gaiola (on the Posillipo coast) and the reserve Regno di Nettuno (Neptune's Kingdom) (comprising some of the shoreline and coastal waters of the Flegrean Islands at the western end of the Gulf of Naples (that is, Ischia, Procida and the latter's smaller satellite island of Vivara.)cover photo, above: Pasquale Vassallo
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