Cento Camerelle and Piscina Mirabilis - Phlegraean fields

The Roman building known in the Phlegraean fields as “Cento camerelle” (literally: One hundred little rooms) it’s one of the most charming archaeological finds in all the territory. Little tunnels dig into tuff create a complicate web of alleys, when the light is right, it really looks like a diabolic labyrinth. In the past the “cento camerelle” was known as “Nero’s prisons” for its tangled shape. Actually the cento camerelle is a part of one of the enormous patrician villas that was in Baia. An other big Roman building, that leaves the visitor astonished is the Piscina Mirabilis (Mirabilis pool). It’s an huge basin built underground, with numerous aisles, it was a freshwater cistern. It’s the biggest Roman cistern ever discovered, and its measures are incredible: It is 72 meters long, 25 meters wide and 15 meters high and it has the capacity of 12.600 cubic metres. The aqueduct brought the water of the river Serino to Naples and to the Phlegaean fields, covering a course of 100 kilometres.