Description of the attraction
The Gaiola Underwater Park in the Campania region of Italy is an area of great archeology and ecology, as ancient ruins and thriving colonies of animals and plants coexist side by side. The park was created in 2002 to carry out archaeological work - on its territory, the ruins of an ancient Roman villa and other structures have been preserved, which are now under water due to the geological phenomenon of bradyseism (raising and lowering of the earth's surface). In ancient times, the coastline was 3-4 meters higher than the current level. A visit to the park will be interesting from a geological point of view, since the local hills of Posillipo are the eastern end of the volcanic zone of the Phlegrean Fields.
From the 1st century BC The coastal area of Posilippo was densely populated, as people were attracted by the incredible beauty of the scenery and the convenient geographical location near the commercial port of Baia and the military port of Capo Miseno. The very name Posilippo comes from the ancient Greek name of the villa Pazilipon, which means "the place where all sorrows come to an end." The villa was built by the wealthy Roman Publius Pollio in the 1st century BC, and when Pollio died, it became the property of the future emperor Augustus. As an imperial domain, the villa has been expanded and rebuilt several times. Today, at the bottom of the underwater park, you can still see fragments of a theater, an odeon, fish ponds for breeding moray eels and nymphea - a structure used by the Romans for taking sea baths. And in the eastern part of "Gaiola" there are the ruins of another ancient structure - the so-called Casa degli Spiriti, the House with Ghosts.
Gaiola can be reached through the impressive Seiano Cave, a 770-meter-long tunnel that was carved into the Posilippo hills to connect the luxury villa to the road in the Phlegraean Fields, where the villas of other wealthy Romans were located.
