Puteoli – Pozzuoli

Is it worth the trip?

From Naples, yes: Pozzuoli is on the city’s metro, and the amphitheatre is a big Roman arena and a quiet one, with 28,899 visitors in 2016 (it.wikipedia). Expect less than the full monument for now. The underground level is closed, the Macellum is shut, entry runs in capped half-hour slots, the older amphitheatre can only be glimpsed from the street and the stadium opens only on request. The Campi Flegrei are an active volcanic area where sites close at short notice when the ground moves; the park refunds tickets for such closures. Check its page on the day. If you are also going to Cuma or Baia, the three-day CircuitoFlegreo ticket makes the amphitheatre part of a fuller day out.

Getting there

Pozzuoli is on Linea 2 of the Naples metro, which ends at Pozzuoli Solfatara, and on the Cumana railway from Naples, which has four stations in the comune. Ferries sail from its port to Ischia and Procida (it.wikipedia). The amphitheatre is a few steps from the Linea 2 stop (it.wikipedia).

The amphitheatre opens at 09.00. It closes at 18.30 on weekdays and 19.00 on weekends and holidays, with last entry an hour earlier, and it is closed on Tuesdays. A ticket is €5, reduced to €2 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25, and free under 18. The €10 CircuitoFlegreo ticket (€5 reduced) adds the archaeological museum in the castle at Baia, the Baia baths and Cuma over three consecutive days. Buy online through Musei Italiani or at the machine by the entrance. The park strongly advises buying online, and groups of more than ten must (Parco Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, read 18 October 2026; check before travelling).

History

The town began as Dicaearchia, a Greek colony founded around 531 BC by refugees from Samos (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia gives 530 BC). The Samnites took it in 421 BC. Rome garrisoned the port during the war with Hannibal and founded a colony there in 194 BC; some accounts give 195 (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia; Pleiades). The Latin name Puteoli is traced either to puteus, a well, or to puteo, to stink, after the sulphur fumes of the Solfatara (en.wikipedia).

It became Rome’s port for the eastern Mediterranean and the harbour of the Alexandrian grain ships. The poet Lucilius called it a “lesser Delos” (it.wikipedia). Its population included Greeks, Jews and Nabataeans, and the merchants of Tyre kept a trading station there. The apostle Paul landed here on his way to Rome and stayed seven days (Acts 28:13–14). The volcanic sand of the area, pulvis puteolanus, was the basis of Roman concrete (en.wikipedia).

The port began to decline once Claudius, Nero and Trajan built up Ostia from AD 42, although Antoninus Pius repaired its storm-damaged pier in 139. Vespasian rewarded the town for its loyalty with land and the title Colonia Flavia (en.wikipedia). The ground here rises and sinks slowly (bradyseism). In the late 5th or early 6th century the sinking shore drove the people out of the lower town and the harbour quarter to the height of Rione Terra, which was then walled (it.wikipedia). The town was sacked by Alaric in 410, Genseric in 455 and Totila in 545 (en.wikipedia).

The Flavian Amphitheatre

The amphitheatre was begun under Vespasian and probably finished under Titus (en.wikipedia). Some scholars have argued from its building technique for a start under Nero, but an inscription recording that the Colonia Flavia Augusta Puteolana paid for it supports the Flavian date (it.wikipedia). It stands where the roads from Naples, Capua and Cumae met (en.wikipedia), and it replaced an older, smaller arena. The outer façade had three tiers of arches, and twenty stairways climbed from the outer portico to the top of the seating (it.wikipedia).

In 305 the Christians Januarius (San Gennaro), Festus, Desiderius and Sossius were condemned to the beasts here. According to tradition the animals spared them, and they were beheaded near the Solfatara (it.wikipedia). The cell where they are said to have been held became a chapel in the 17th or 18th century. Farms and vineyards later filled the ruin. Excavation began in 1839 and was completed by Amedeo Maiuri between 1926 and 1947 (it.wikipedia).

The older amphitheatre

Puteoli was the only town in ancient Italy apart from Rome with two amphitheatres (it.wikipedia). The older one measured about 130 m by 95 m (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia). Its date is given as Republican, between Sulla and Caesar, or as Augustan or a little earlier (it.wikipedia). It was discovered when the Rome–Naples railway was dug through it in 1915 (it.wikipedia). About ten arches of rough stonework that carried the seating survive and can be glimpsed from the road near the metro overpass (it.wikipedia). According to Cassius Dio, a freedman of Nero’s staged games with wild beasts in it in AD 66 for Tiridates, whom Nero had made king of Armenia (it.wikipedia).

The Temple of Augustus

A merchant, Lucius Calpurnius, paid for the marble temple to Augustus, designed by the architect Lucius Cocceius Auctus. It replaced a temple of about 194 BC that Sulla had restored (Pleiades; it.wikipedia). The temple became a church of the town’s patron saint, Proculus, in the late 5th or early 6th century, and later disappeared inside a Baroque cathedral. After a fire in 1964 the Roman structure was brought back to light, and the cathedral reopened for worship in 2014 (it.wikipedia).

The Stadium of Antoninus Pius

Antoninus Pius built the stadium in honour of his predecessor Hadrian, who had died at Baiae in 138 and was first buried at a villa of Cicero’s near here. Greek-style games called the Eusebeia were held in it (it.wikipedia; the operator). The stadium measures about 300 m by 70 m (the operator). The Via Domiziana was driven through it lengthwise in 1932. The site was excavated and opened to the public in 2008 (it.wikipedia). Two rows of stone seats and the vaulted corridor under the upper seating survive (it.wikipedia).