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THE DRAGONARA… This cave is sixty metres long and six metres large, it contains other lateral galleries which intersect like a chess-board and are all encrusted with a strong and white plaster. It is covered with a main vault supported by 12 pillars. Until it was accessible, the Dragonara offered the vision of a still efficient source of Roman age, where the Saracens and the pirates got ashore to make supplies of waters. … Entering you have the impression that there are important analogies with the Crypta of Cocceio in Cumae. It could have also been a structure of the naval dockyards of the port, already in the Greek age. Gianni RACE “Bacoli Baia Cumae Miseno: History and myth” THE CAVE OF THE DRAGONARAOn the beach of Miseno there is the entrance of the Cave of the Dragonara, an imposing cistern completely dug in the tuff and covered with a barrel vault, divided in the inside in five aisles by four lines of irregular pillars. The structure can be considered the development on a large scale of other similar buildings in the Phlegraean area. In Baia, for example, a cistern dug in the tuff sustained by four pillars was realized in the tuffaceous ridge at the cross road between the Lucullus and Fusaro streets. In the vault of the cistern they open three roof lights endowed with stairs, which take on the upper side of the cistern. Excavations effected years ago in this zone brought to the discovery of bad kept ruins of a Nymphaeum and of some cisterns. The presence in the west side of the Dragonara of a spring of fresh water, maybe already used by the Saracens but surely till few years ago by the inhabitants of this place, leads us to think that this and other cisterns were utilized for the maritime villa attributed to Lucullus. In proximity to it, in fact, there are a series of rooms (Nymphei and fish tanks), at present half-submerged between the beach and the ridge. We can deduce that the cistern was of private use from the existence of the Piscina Mirabilis, which was certainly public and of larger capacity, able to canalize more functionally the water of the Serino to supply directly the fleet and the maritime colony. Paolo CAPUTO and Maria Rosaria PUGLIESE “The way of the Thermae |
