On the trail of the Romans in Bacoli: Cento Camerelle 

About this activity

If you are in the footsteps of the ancient Romans and you're planning a tour among the archaeological monuments of this ancient and very important civilization, Naples is the most suitable destination. Located in the municipality of Bacoli, there is the so-called complex One Hundred Chambers, one of the many vestiges of our past. This complex was carved directly out of a tuffaceous ridge that drops sheer to the Miseno Sea.

Why visit the Hundred Chambers complex

Cento Camerelle is a multi-story water system. Below the first two workable ones, in fact, there is also an intermediate and a lower floor, completely equal to the ones above.

A short flight of steps leads to the upper floor, partially excavated in the tufa and located three meters below the current ground level. This floor was intended for a large reservoir of the imperial age, divided into four naves, covered by a barrel vault and supported by three rows of pillars, covered with signinum pavement. The cisterns of which it is composed, however, are in opus reticulatum covered with cocciopesto (hydraulic waterproofing plaster). One descends to the lower floor via an iron ramp that reaches six meters below the present floor level. This part was used for water supply through a series of tunnels from the Republican period. They are vaulted and connected by narrow, low passages. In them the names of visitors from past centuries written in charcoal are still preserved on the walls. They too are dug in tuff but lined with opus coementicium and lined with earthenware.

A truly evocative visit and a journey through the ages of the Romans.

The most important things to know about One Hundred Chambers

The monument consists of a series of tanks which were actually pertaining to a villa, the ruins of which can be seen in part in the tuffaceous ridge from which this ancient water system was derived, by means of the presence of fishponds semi-submerged in the body of water in front of it. The environment, in fact, is very wet.

Curiosities and historical facts about Cento Camerelle

Historians have speculated that the villa to which the Cento Camerelle cisterns were attached would have belonged to Hortensius. The Roman consul needed large quantities of water since inside his villa he owned not only nymphaea and fountains with water features, but also a complex of fishponds for breeding moray eels. The latter was, however, only the first of the villa's owners.

The building was later acquired, in fact, by Antonia Minor, a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. It later passed to Nero and finally to Vespasian. In the seventeenth century, the complex was given its present, distinctive name, replacing the one that had become common in the literary tradition of the time. The complex had always been known by the name "Nero's Prisons". Indeed, Tacitus relates that among these intricate tunnels, Nero had locked up his mother Agrippina Before ordering its assassination.

Cento Camerelle was also a stopover in the days of the Grand Tour, as evidenced by the names of visitors written in charcoal, among which is the 1737 signature of Allan Ramsay, official portrait painter of the Edinburgh royal family.