From via Castello, after having covered a small flight of steps made of particular slabs of lavic stone, you arrive to the top through a beautiful entrance portal of piperno, surmounted by a marble Bourbon escutcheon, and enter a panoramic terrace.

From the terrace you can enjoy a wide and suggestive landscape foreshortening facing the inlet of Marina Grande below and the tuffaceous bench of Cento Camerelle, while following you can see Punta Pennata and, covered in the south by the mythical Mount Miseno, the suggestive urban agglomerate of the old city of Bacoli.

Once passed the portal and entered the ancient fortress, you arrive before the south-west bastion, where it has been recently drawn a space which receives the first section of the Archaeological Museum of the Phlegraean Fields.

In this room, in special ed lighted windows, they are exhibited about 60 of the many fragments of plaster casts of Roman age, derived from originals of Greek age, found in the so-called Roman Thermae of Baia (Archaeological Park of Baia).

These extraordinary and unique ruins were discovered by chance. It was 1954 and they were bringing to light again the ancient Baia when, in one of the rooms pertaining the so-called Terma of Sosandra, they were found many fragments of plaster casts.

Sixteen years after the fortuitous discovery, at the beginning of 1970, after having obtained the publishing allowance both by the discoverer of the fragments prof. M. Napoli, and by the Archaeological Superintendence of Naples and Caserta, the illustrious authoritative prof. W. H. Schuchardt began the research works.

Thanks to a patient and careful analysis, of comparison and also of joint (the fragment of the original plaster cast of Roman age was embedded in the modern casts of the sculptures to which they probably belonged), it was discovered that they were plasters derived from bronze originals of Classic age and so datable to the V-VI century B.C.. Actually the plasters were the negatives of the statues from which the artists of the Atelier of Baia draw their copies.

It was this way that the Villas of Bauli, Misenum, Puteoli and obviously the Imperial Palatium (palace) of Baia were sumptuously furnished with replicas chosen among the most praised masterpieces of the Greek art.

In the middle of the small room there is a statue coming from a submarine recovery of some tears ago in the port of Miseno. The statue, partially damaged by its long stay in the water, represents Aphrodite; and it is a Roman replica of a bronze original of Phidian matrix.

A complex guide route shows in the windows:

• The cast of the facial mask of Aristogitone who, together with Armodio, formed the famous bronze group realized by Antenore and destroyed by the Persians in 490 B.C. It was reconstructed and replaced in the agora of Athens, copied by the Romans, today it is visible in its wholeness in the special gallery of the Tyrannicides in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Another copy of Aristogitone can be admired in the Vatican Museums.

• Fragments concerning the Three Amazons of Ephesus. Pliny the Elder tells that the most famous sculptors of the first Classic period: Phidias, Polycletus, Kresilas and Phradmon were invited to join a competition for the creation of a statue of an Amazon for the sanctuary of Ephesus. The winner of this unusual artistic competition was Polycletus.

• Fragments pertaining the statue of the goddess Athena, called Athena from Velletri, realized by Phidias.

• Fragments of the statue of the god Apollo, famous as Apollo of the Belvedere.

• Other fragments of the group of Eirene and Pluto made by Cefisodoto in a more recent age.

• While from the cast of the torches and in other fragments it is possible to recognize the statue of Persephone.

From some casts we have shortly told the history of the over 400 ones which constituted the exceptional recovery. About 80 certified the existence of other bronze originals not reproduced in Roman age and so definitely lost.

The remaining part both for dimensions and for conditions, which did not allow a right interpretation, was put aside.