What is this all about?
This website concerns a complex set of buildings set against a volcanic cliff, behind which are tunnels and chambers carved out of solid volcanic tufa rock. The site is at Baia, in the north of the bay of Naples, Italy.
These features were later adapted and incorporated into a set of Roman baths, which has disguised their antiquity and what lies in the hill behind them. Archaeologists do agree, however, that these are among the oldest buildings at the site.
Many of the features indicate that this is a ritual site of some kind, rather than a utilitarian construction supplying volcanic heat and hot water to a bath complex. These include hundreds of lamp niches, S bends at strategic places to obscure the view ahead, a curious hinged door selecting one of two tunnels, a vaulted and pillared inner sanctuary and an underground river (The Styx?), running directly below the sanctuary.
In association with the structures within the hillside, there exists against the cliff face a staircase to an upper level and five ruined buildings, which mainly appear as a series of sillhouettes against the cliff face together with some ruined stone footings. It is quite impossible to reconstruct what they might have looked like.
In front of the buildings is an open area and in front of one building there is a court of some kind, containing two D shaped baths.
The descent into hell
This short video extract is from a 2001 documentary made by Robert Temple to coincide with the publishing of his book Netherworld, in which he describes the 20 years he spent trying to gain official access to the tunnels. The film was made by Mentorn Films.
In spite of repeated requests by Temple, no further official access has been granted to the tunnels which are strictly off-limits. There are no plans to investigate this archaeological gem.
The clip is used here with the kind permission of cameraman Colin Rogal.
Unearthing the Oracle of the Dead – 1962
A British naval Commander and chemical engineer called Robert Paget, married to an Italian opera singer wife, retired in 1958 to Baia, hoping to enjoy a peaceful time in the sunshine. He idly looked at the mass of Roman remains around the area and started to get very interested in the local archaeology. This area had been known since antiquity as ‘The Flaming Fields’, ‘The Phlegrean Fields’ or ‘Campi Flegrei’ as they are called today. The whole region is an accumulation of up to 80 volcanic craters, some, such as Solfatara are still active.
In Greek mythology this was the region where Homer’s Oddysey sites the underworld. Much later in Roman times Virgil’s Aeneid has Aeneas the Trojan taken by the Sybil of nearby Cumae to visit the underworld.
Paget found a kindred spirit in a younger man, an American naval officer called Keith Jones, who had been assigned to NATO’s Naples headquarters.
Together Paget and Jones discussed the local archaeology and read as much as they could of the ancient writings which mention the area, one steeped in mystery and one of the earliest settlements of the Greeks in Italy, long before Italy had become a united country under the Romans. Long before the great Pantheon of the Greek gods existed A time when there existed only Hera, the mother goddess.
In reading references to the underworld, Paget and Jones were astonished to find that many wrote of the underworld in this region as being an actual place, rather than something dreamed up in mythological stories by Homer, Virgil and others.
Paget and Jones decided to actively look for a possible site of the Oracle of the Dead and the Underworld. Having read every detail they could in the history books, they embarked on a systematic search of all the tunnels within a wide area, none of which fitted the bill for a descent to the underworld. Tradition states that this was on the edge of Lake Avernus, which is in the region, but some way away from Baia.
For two years Paget and Jones searched for the underworld they felt should exist.
One day Paget and Jones were sitting on some fallen pillars in a far corner of the Roman baths at Baia, looking at the row of buildings known today as ‘Il Piccole Terme’, the small baths. A chance remark to them from a custodian at the site mentioned that the building on the end was thought to be a Samnite temple, ie dating from 420-330 BC.
A temple? Here in the middle of the Roman baths? How unlikely. Immediately Paget and Jones started to look at it in a new light. After investigating further and enlisting experts, they were able to ascertain that the temple is more likely to be Greek.
But what is a Greek temple doing disguised within a later set of Roman baths? It is an interesting question.
Exploration led to a series of discoveries which are complex and perplexing.
Paget was to spend much of the rest of his life not enjoying the sunshine, but digging in the dark, exploring and measuring many hundred metres of tunnel hidden deep inside the hillside.
The site has never been officially explored by archaeologists. Much of it was deliberately filled with earth in Roman times. This in itself was a monumental effort.
This website is my personal attempt to pull together all the information that is currently known about this place, in the hope that one day a proper investigation will be made. I hope you will read and enjoy the story.
Larry Dreher August 9, 2012
Went down into the oracle in 1970. Was scary. There were three of us. I was the only one who went through the gate as it was. The river was off to the left of the gate.
Don Frew September 25, 2012
I visited the site in 1998 and attempted to enter, but couldn’t climb down. Later, I met a man who participated in the original exploration. He said it was a good thing I didn’t go in, since the original method of circulating air in the cave no longer works and there had been a build-up of sulfuric gas, i.e. I probably would have died without breathing gear.
antrum September 26, 2012
Robert Temple, Michael Baigent, their two wives, two official minders and at least one district archaeologist went down there in 2001 and were quite able to breath unaided, deep down at the River Styx. It is not pleasant, but quite breathable.
The story of noxious gas in the tunnels has persisted since it was first opened, probably coming originally from Amedeo Maiuri, who forbade his workmen to venture into the tunnel very far on the grounds of noxious gases. When first opened the general temperature, certainly down at the River Styx, was a lot hotter than it is today. When Paget entered in the 1960s he could see where the excavators’ footprints ended, a short way in. Noxious gas still remains as the official excuse for discouraging people from entering. If you had written for official permission to enter it would probably have been denied for this reason.
It could well be dangerous down there for other reasons, such as burial by the soil that now fills parts of the tunnels, deliberately put there by the Romans to seal the place off. Temple and Baigent have been any denied further official access, in spite of repeated requests. The powers that be don’t want anyone going in there.
Any miner will tell you that it is not possible to ventilate an underground system unless you have one entrance for new air to come in and one for the old air to go out of. Yet this place has just one that we know about, worked by sucking cool new air in along the floor while stale hot air went overhead. There was an inner circulation system that worked before the Romans blocked off the passage to the sanctuary. The hottest air is at the lowest point of the complex. This rose up to sanctuary level, and then further up into a tunnel that met at the 400′ point. From here it went out along the ceiling of the main entrance tunnel. The Romans blocked off the sanctuary tunnel and it remains blocked today. In spite of this it is possible to breathe in there. The tunnels have a lot less height today, through crystalline deposits settling on the floor to the depth of about 2′ 6″, 0.75 metres.
John Peiffer November 29, 2012
I met Dr. Paget in the fall of 1970 when he had contacted one of the AFSouth SubAqua Club members to verify the location of some submerged pilae near Bacoli. He had some interesting theories.
During my years as a volunteer diver with the amateur group G.A.N., we were once asked to assist the group in the exploration of a nearby tunnel system that was adjacent to the road in Lucrino since they lacked any breathing apparatus that would allow them to safely traverse the tunnels without suffering from the effects of any gases that were present. We cheerfully complied, but as a precautionary measure we each wore our scuba tank and regulator requiring only one removal to get through a tight restriction. A closed circuit oxygen rebreather would have certainly been a more comfortable choice than the heavy steel scuba tank, but we didn’t have any with us at the time.
On one wall near the entrance, there was an inscription attributing the construction of the tunnel to the emperor Hadrian. Most of the inscription was crumbling which required repeated attempts with different lighting angles to properly photograph. There were heavy deposits of sulphur crystals that obscured much of the inscription chiseled into the stone wall. A subsequent excursion was made by the team using aluminum foil to make a non-destructive “cast” of sorts to fully decipher the text. Half way down the tunnel we encountered a short section of aqueduct specus (mix of flat red tile for the pointed arch and walls of opus reticulatum only 1 meter in height) that is found in acqueduct structures but it seemed odd to find it embedded in this dry section of carved rock.
Beyond this restriction the tunnel ceiling extended ahead while the floor sloped downward with deep sifted dirt on the floor that ended in a flooded section approximately 5 meters across. The water was less than a meter in depth and almost a bright yellow in color. There was a strong hydrogen sulfide odor that encouraged us to keep using our regulators. We wedged ourselves between the narrow walls to cross to the opposite side without getting our feet wet. There the floor rose again at a steep angle coming back up to the top of the ceiling where the walking height section of the tunnel ended abruptly with a left turn. It only extended another 3 meters or so with visible traces of the last stone cutting tools’ marks in the dead end wall of the tunnel. We didn’t take accurate measurements on that exploratory trip, but I believe the section of tunnel that we were in was only about 60 meters long. The high level of humidity in the tunnel fogged the filters and lenses of our cameras, including the underwater Nikonos I had brought with me so that we were unable to get any footage of the most interesting portions of the tunnel.
The only pictures we were able to get were those of the inscription near the entrance which had plenty of outside air and normal humidity levels. In my return visits to the area in 1998, 2004, 2006 and 2012, I was unable to locate the entrance to this tunnel but I have often wondered what this incomplete project was intended for.Some of the residential properties in the surrounding hills that I have been in were built upon older ruins which have tunnels underneath them, some of which now are used as wine cellars or storage. It would be interesting to explore and map them all to gain a comprehensive view of the complete underground network in this area.
Venetia bloomfield April 25, 2013
My mother moved to Baia during WW2. She lived along the main road opposite what was then the ammunitions’ factory. During air raids they used to go into the hillside behind & hide in caves. Wonder if these were connected? Sdly she died last Novemeber at 86yrs old so we can’t ask her anything else about her experiences. I do know that she used to love swimming over the roman ruins in the sea.