03/31/2021
Italy’s Atlantis: The Story of Portus Julius
Joseph Walker
I can remember back in 1990 while living in Italy as part of the US contingent of NATO, of consistent rumors of an underwater city near Naples, Italy. Local Italians told me conspiratorially that it was their own Atlantis, but few knew much else about this fabled town. In the absence of knowledge, the legends grew over time amongst the local Italians and the US military stationed just a few miles away. Was it a town built by the Romans, or maybe by the Greeks who came before them? As this region was known by the ancients to be preferred by the “Gods,” could the sunken city be something else entirely?
I was intrigued for a few years about the fabled sunken city of Italy and finally, in the days before internet, met someone who told me where to find this hidden jewel, just off the coast of the modern-day seaside village of Baia, located in the Gulf of Pozzuoli.
I hired a boat owned by a local fisherman one Saturday and gathered some snorkeling equipment and went out to see what I could find on my own private adventure. The day was partly cloudy with the sun shining through periodically. We left the small pier of Baia and ventured out into the waters in the fisherman’s small boat that bobbed up and down in the choppy unsettled springtime currents.
We moved along the coast, passing the volcanic walls of yellow tufa stone of Punta Epitaffio before settling in along a straight strip of beach directly dividing the sea from Lago Lucrino, or the Lucrino Lake. The fisherman excitedly told me to look down into the waters because we were right above the Italian Atlantis. The waters to me were dark, uninviting and frankly I begin to think that there must be a plate of pasta and some red wine that would be more worthy of my attention than looking into mirky waters for a fabled and long lost city.
I was steeling my frazzled nerves for a plunge into darkness when suddenly, the clouds broke, and the once dark waters were made transparent and inviting. It was at that instance, I had one of my life’s most incredible moments. I was stunned to find myself looking down on ancient walls and what appeared to be flooring. Excitedly, and having forgotten my previous fear, I put on my snorkeling equipment and dived into the water over the yells of the fisherman who I believed, but I could not quite hear him, was telling me to be careful.
I touched the walls and saw that they were constructed by a type of brickwork called opus reticulatum that was certainly Roman. I next dived to the floor of the seabed, about 10 feet down, full of seagrass and curious fish and wiped it clean. To my utter astonishment after a few minutes of going back up for air and returning to the bottom again for more cleaning, I discovered a full and massive Roman mosaic. It was white, with a black border and circle decorations which encapsulated an artistic plant. Stunned, I swam for a few hours over Roman walls and floors, through Roman columns, and around ancient statues that had been partially toppled. The space I covered was no more than 100 yards and yet there was still so much to see and discover.
I would end up going back to this underwater archeological site often over the years. In the mid-1990s, with my friend, Ric Okoniewski, we started the first snorkeling tours to this underwater archeological site. It was an amazing adventure. We would start from where Ric’s sailboat, the “Why Not” was moored, and enter the flooded volcano of nearby Nisida. This was one of the abodes, according to the ancient Greeks, where the cyclops Polyphemus dwelled. Other local Greek legends had it as a temporary port of the mythical Odysseus (Ulysses). After entering and swimming in an ancient volcano we would cross the Golf of Pozzuoli, which the ancients called the bay of Triton, son of Neptune, before eventually entering the waters around the sunken city, by now known officially as Portus Julius, for a dive.
As if the adventure itself of snorkeling and diving in an ancient underwater city was not exciting enough, we always made sure to have plenty of local wine, cheese, big green olives and Neapolitan bread to keep us company. We eventually moved past Portus Julius and begin exploring a realm of underwater villas just off Punta Epitaffio. Inevitably, we discovered properties long underneath the waves once owned by the Emperor Nero and a nymphaeum of the Emperor Claudius. We would go on to explore, sometimes on tour and sometimes alone, various caves along the coast, many with statuary and votive offerings left behind by the Romans.
These were the heady days of discovery. Today, more is known about Portus Julius and the work of several lone archaeologists and part time explorers has been collected and synthesized into a broader understanding of the region and its past. There is in fact today a designated underwater archeological park and many of the items have been pulled from their depths and placed in the archeological museum in the Aragonese castle that towers over Baia and the Gulf of Pozzuoli itself. This castle in fact sits on top of the old villa of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra was here when Caesar met his end in Rome on the Ides of March.
Since the time of my adventures, much has come to light about Italy’s Atlantis. We now know that it was the famous Portus Julius constructed by Octavian’s friend Marcus Agrippa. If the latter’s name sounds familiar it is because it is Agrippa’s name that adorns the Pantheon of Rome itself. Octavian would become the first Emperor of Rome, Augustus, and he paid homage to his great uncle Julius by naming the port after him.
Portus Julius was originally built to hide the fleet of Octavian as he prepared to battle his enemy Sextus Pompey. Pompey was the last great enemy of Octavian after the latter defeated Marcus Antony. Just beyond the littoral of Portus Julius was a lake inside of another flooded volcano called Lago d’Averno. Here, Agrippa and Octavian cut a canal from the beach through to the lake and then developed a port to attend to the needs of a newly formed Western Roman Fleet. The fleet was able to slip in and conduct military exercises inside of the lake unseen and unnoticed by Pompey’s patrols. The sailors and troops for the fleet were stationed at nearby Cumae and a tunnel was built underneath the ground that would allow them to shuttle back and forth between the town and the lake without being noticed.
Octavian and Agrippa from this new port city and shielded naval base in a flooded volcano eventually defeated Pompey and one can say, that the Roman Empire begins right here at Portus Julius making its fame and subsequent loss underneath the waters that much more of a story worth telling.
The life of the ancient Portus Julius, now better excavated, and slightly better understood, was however short. As Emperor, Augustus, formerly known as Octavian, created a larger base up the road to house the Roman fleet near the town of Miseno and this served as the headquarters of the Western Roman Fleet for several centuries right up to the demise of the Western Empire itself in the 5th century.
One of the main reasons that Portus Julius had a short lifespan was that it was prone to silting and the land base itself was unstable. By the 5th century parts of what was Portus Julius were already dipping below the sea and the canal linking the sea to Lago d’Averno was no longer navigable. The entire region is in what is known as a super volcano zone boasting several volcanoes of various ages that menace the area to this day. The local name for this volcanic zone is the Campi Flegrei, which simply means burning fields. One famous phenomenon of the Campi Flegrei is what is known as Bradyseism (slow movement). As magma heats up and expands, or cools and contracts, the land bends and buckles in many places over the years and sometimes centuries. Bradyseism and volcanic activity can be easily seen to this very day by a visit of the town of Pozzuoli and its nearby Solfatara volcano.
The final coup de grace for Portus Julius however came in 1538 when in a period of a few days in September of that year, a volcano grew from the ground, swallowing the village of Tripergola and thrusting what was left of Portus Julius, and various other ancient Roman ruins, into the sea where they remain. The name of the new volcano is simply known as Monte Nuovo, or the new mountain and it is indeed Europe’s newest mountain.
While cataclysmic natural events can be destructive, they can also preserve as well. On the other side of the Gulf of Pozzuoli is the larger Bay of Naples with the ruined cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum lurking to the South. As volcanic action destroyed and preserved these sister cities, similar volcanic action did the same for Portus Julius allowing us to explore and understand more of ancient Rome.
Today, “Italy’s Atlantis” can be enjoyed by scuba diving or on a glass bottom boat. While the large underwater zone is not as free to explore as it once was, it is still exciting to visit, and we do know that there are parts of the old port and the nearby town of Baia that still lie beneath the waters of the bay. They will be uncovered at some point soon and more of the region’s fascinating story will be brought to light. If that can happen in combination with some local red wine, cheese, large green olives, and divine Neapolitan bread, then I will truly look forward to it indeed. Stay tuned!
