L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano FRANCESCA BEZZONE Y ou probably know them better as P hlegraean F ields and may be aw are they're not far from Naples and the Vesuvius. Those who studied a bit of Classics in s chool may remember the Romans, and the Greeks before them, had a special relationship with the area, the latter making of them their first continental colony in Italy and giving them their name, the first turning them into the gates of their ow n Otherworld. But let's go in order: geo- graphically speaking, the Campi Flegrei develop around the Cam- pania towns of Pozzuoli, Bacoli, Monte di Procida and Quarto, extending into the sea to the Phlegraean islands of Procida and Is chia and, on land, to Naples' Agnano and Bagnoli areas. An elliptical, two-kilome- ters-wide crater, characterized by a series of geological forma- tions and events that make it unique in the world. As said, the Greeks chris- tened the Fields: in their ancient, beautiful language the term phlé- gra means "burning," the perfect description of what those first colons may have thought when discovering the place, all those centuries ago. Th e burning fields: no name would be better apt at describing the nature and physical morphology of an area where volcanic eruptions and quakes are an almos t daily occurrence. The fields' morphol- ogy, as satellite images clearly show, are made of numerous volcanic craters formed through- out the millennia, up to about 500 years ago, w hen the "youngest" Phlegraean forma- tion, Mount Nuovo, came into being: it was 1538. Geologists have managed to reconstruct about 3000 years of the Fields' history: apparently, beside the already mentioned Mount Nuovo eruption, no other major cata- strophic event took place; this explains how both Greeks and Romans - and the S amnites before them - decided to settle in the area, fertile and beautiful, leaving behind amazing vestiges of their presence. One to sym- bolize them all, the Pozzuoli Roman theater, the third largest still extant, after the Colosseum and that in Capua, which was erected under the rule of Emper- or Vespasian and inaugurated by Nero. To the eyes of our Greek and Roman ances tors , the area looked unsettling: solfatare (vol- canic craters emitting steam and sulfurous fumes), boiling mud pits and continuous quakes shak- ing a land already signed by numerous eruptions and natural destruction. It was quite a land- scape, one that certainly teased the curiosity - and creative affla- tus - of w riters and artis ts . Aeschylus was among the first to talk about it, but it was Greek geographer Strabo, who lived in the period between the end of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Empire, to give us one of the earliest, most vivid descriptions, along with the first association of the Campi Flegrei with mythology: according to his words, it was here that the events of the Gigantomachy took place. The fight between Giants and Olympian gods for universal domination, fulcrum to early Greek mythology, was thought to have taken place also here, among the pes tilential fumes and shaking grounds of the Fields. Always according to Strabo, the god of fire Volcano had one of his foundries here. To Italians , how ever, the Phlegraeans Fields remain most- ly attached to the Roman idea of H ades , the O therw orld. We often call it "Hell," and tend to attribute to the concept the same negative connotation our culture has associated to the word for centuries and centuries. The Romans had a much simpler view of the G reat Beyond, though: a sort of eternal Purga- tory, where all souls lived in semi obscurity, in a state of placid resignation. It is to this nether world that the Campi Fle- grei were entrance to: Virgil, we believe, took inspiration from their unsettling, yet mesmerizing appearance to create the famous scene in Book VI of the Aeneid, where Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl descend into the belly of the Earth, straight into Hades. Keeping into this dark - and alas, time relevant: we're just after Halloween - otherwordly theme, we should get up and close with the lake of Averno. Not far from Pozzuoli, to the Romans this was the place where the world of the living met that of the dead, the liminal spot where the seen and the unseen mingled: it w as s aid that, because of its ties with the land of the defunct, birds could not fly over it. However, the idyllic location of the lake and the mild- ness of its climate made it very popular among Roman VIPs: Agrippina, Nero's own mother, had a villa by its shores and some believe it's here she was murdered. The great Cicero also had a residence near the lake, but it was entirely destroyed in the 16 th century, after the tragic eruption that created M ount Nuovo. A nd if you think the ties between the Campi Flegrei and the Otherworld ended entirely with Christianization or the fall of the Western Roman Empire, you'd be somehow mistaken, as British Medieval author Gervase of Tilbury, who lived between the 12 th and the 13 th century, believed Hades' gates had sunk into the ground after an eruption. Today, the area is renowned for its natural peculiarity and for its immense archaeological and historical patrimony. The town of Baia, for instance, is home an archaeological park that extends under the waters of the bay; always in Baia, you'll find the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, hosted in another piece of historical beauty, the Aragona castle. On the nearby lake of Fusaro visitors can enjoy the Casina Vanvitelliana, created in 1782 by architect Carlo Van- vitelli for king Ferdinand IV Bourbon. Last, but not certainly least in this ideal trip around the Campi Flegrei is Cuma, first Greek colony on continental Italy and home to the famous Sybil. In the town are another archaeological park and, of course, the cave where the Sybil was believed to read the future of humanity: entirely excavated in tufa, this 130 meters long gallery, along with its numerous branches, was also used by early Christians to bury their dead. The elegant Casina Vanvitelliana, Bourbons palace, on lake Fusaro, Pozzuoli, Naples, Italy ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES I Campi Flegrei: the Empire's Mouth of Hell An otherwordly appearance made the Greeks and the Romans believe the supernatural inhabited these land

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