Ep. 44: Discovering Italy’s Atlantis: Baia and the Sybil’s Cave at Cuma

Joseph Walker, author of Buried Italy and the voice behind Italian History with Joseph, spent the early 1990s exploring the submerged Roman resort of Baia and harvesting grapes in the ancient amphitheater at Cuma.

Before Baia had snorkeling schools and glass-bottom boats, Joseph Walker was hiring a local fisherman to take him out into the Gulf of Pozzuoli and swimming down into what turned out to be the nymphaeum of Claudius and Nero. That dive became his life’s work. He arrived in Italy with the U.S. Navy in the late 1980s and never really left. This episode is a long, winding conversation about the Campi Flegrei, the volcanic zone west of Naples where myth and geology keep colliding. Joseph and I share a lot of interests, and this conversation could have gone on for hours.

What we discuss:

* How Walker found Portus Julius and started bringing tourists to see the underwater ruins.

* The Cave of Cumean Synil, how it predates Virgil by roughly 600 years, and Walker’s case for Etruscan involvement in its construction

* The amphitheater at Cuma that isn’t on the archaeological park’s tourist map, and the harvest feast that Walker got invited to as a young man

* Lago d’Averno as one of the mythological entrances to Hades, and the Oscan cult of death that came before the Greeks arrived

* Naples’ own relationship to death and the ritual of adopting bones at the Fontanelle Cemetery

* Bradyseism, the rising and falling of the Campi Flegrei landmass, and the current push to reopen sites like the Piscina Mirabilis to tourism

* How the region’s volcanic history may connect to the extinction of the Neanderthals

We also got into Puglia a bit and discussed:

* Castel del Monte and Frederick II’s use of the octagon as a symbol linking heaven and earth

* The mosaic floor at the Cathedral of Otranto, its King Arthur panel, and the monastery library destroyed in the 1480 Ottoman sack

Find Joseph Walker:italianhistorywithjoseph.com/oteri — includes a free download of seven “Buried Italy” sites and a free chapter of the book (the Narnia chapter, cut from the final edit).

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