← Back to the map
Modern photograph of the so-called Temple of Mercury (Temple of Echo), Baiae · Wikimedia Commons
Baiae
Italia · Roman province·Italy·Founded 2nd c. BCE (resort)
The emperors' favorite spa. Domed bath halls fed by volcanic hot springs on the Bay of Naples. Trajan and his court would have known it well.
Largely submerged; much of the ancient resort now lies underwater in the Bay of Naples, protected as the Baia Underwater Archaeological Park and visited by divers.
Excavation history
1959-1960
Italian underwater archaeology surveys — The first underwater survey campaign mapped the submerged Roman city off the coast, producing the first archaeological map of what had sunk beneath the Bay of Naples.
1980-1984
Italian state archaeologists (Soprintendenza) — The first formal underwater excavation uncovered the Nymphaeum of Emperor Claudius and its sculptural complex.
2002
Italian Ministry of Culture — The Underwater Archaeological Park of Baia was formally established to protect and manage the submerged ruins.
Notable finds
Statue of Zeus Enthroned
Looted from Baiae's sanctuary complex and sold to the Getty Museum in 1992, the enthroned marble Zeus was returned to Italy in June 2017 after archaeologists matched it to a fragment still in the ground. It went back on display in the Castello di Baia in October 2018.
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, Castello di Baia
Statue of Antonia Minor
Divers recovered this marble figure of Claudius's mother on 24 September 1981 from the submerged Nymphaeum of Punta Epitaffio, where it stood among a gallery of Julio-Claudian portraits commissioned by the emperor himself.
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, Castello di Baia
Statue of Ulysses Offering Wine
A storm surge in January 1969 exposed this marble group of Ulysses handing Polyphemus a cup of wine, still standing in the apse of Emperor Claudius's sunken nymphaeum at Punta Epitaffio.
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, Castello di Baia
Aphrodite Sosandra
This marble copy of a 5th-century-BC bronze by Kalamis came out of the ground in the early 1950s in Baiae's so-called Sosandra Baths sector, one of more than twenty Roman-era copies of the original to survive.
Naples National Archaeological Museum
The Baiae Plaster-Cast Hoard
Workers clearing a cellar in the Baths of Sosandra in 1954 turned up more than 400 fragments of ancient plaster casts, molded from roughly thirty famous Greek bronzes including the Tyrannicides and the Athena of Velletri — proof Baiae hosted a working atelier that copied Greek masterpieces for wealthy Roman buyers.
Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, Castello di Baia
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →