The Sunken City Of Baiae And Portus Julius In Italy
Ruthven/Wikimedia CommonsA submerged column at Baiae.
Baiae was an ancient Roman town overlooking the Gulf of Naples that has been referred to as the “Las Vegas of the Roman Empire.” It was a place where the elite whiled away their time in luxurious villas, but today, those homes are up to 30 feet beneath the water’s surface.
Baiae once served as a getaway for the likes of Julius Caesar and Nero. It was where Julia Agrippina plotted the murder of her husband, the emperor Claudius, and where Hadrian took his final breath.
In 25 B.C.E., the poet Sextus Propertius wrote of the city:
But you must quickly leave degenerate Baiae;
These beaches bring divorce to many,
Beaches long the enemy of decent girls.
A curse on Baiae’s water, love’s disgrace!
However, the Roman land of decadence and excess wasn’t meant to last. Beginning in the fourth century C.E., volcanic and seismic activity splintered the city, pulling part of it into the sea along with all of its luxuries and pleasure palaces. With it went the Roman Empire’s biggest naval base, Portus Julius, which once housed the empire’s western naval fleet.
Ruthven/Wikimedia CommonsA statue stands beneath the water.
In the 1940s, as reported by The Guardian, Italian Air Force pilot Raimondo Baucher was flying over the former location of Portus Julius when he spotted “a strange ghost town” beneath the waves. Excavations began in 1959, and archaeologists have since uncovered marble statues, ancient baths, fountains, walls, and more.
Today, scuba divers can explore the ruins of the underwater city, though the statues have been moved to museums and replaced with reproductions.
