The ancient remains of a luxurious Roman villa have emerged from the waters of Lake Fusaro near Naples, Italy, due to geological uplift caused by bradyseism. "They were underwater! Roman walls and rooms have been discovered in Lake Fusaro. They probably belonged to a luxurious villa," said Josi Gerardo Della Ragione, the Mayor of Bacoli, according to HeritageDaily.
Bradyseism refers to the slow rise or fall of a section of the Earth's surface, driven by the movement of magma or hydrothermal fluids beneath the ground. This phenomenon inflates or depresses the ground level depending on the gas and magma accumulated in the depths.
Since 2005, the ground level in the Campi Flegrei area has risen by 138 centimeters, with 20 centimeters recorded in 2024 alone, indicating an acceleration of the phenomenon, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. The acceleration of the area's elevation has caused the seabed to rise and the shoreline to retreat, leading to damage and difficult access to some ports and marinas along the coast.
An unexpected result of the bradyseismic activity is the emergence of the Roman villa, visible in aerial photography. The structure appears to correspond to the foundations of a Roman building, partly still underwater. The villa will now be studied by the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape of Naples.
Lake Fusaro is located in the comune of Bacoli in the Italian province of Naples. The lake was formed by the emergence of a strip of land that separated it from the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Naples. The area is part of the Phlegraean Fields, a large volcanic caldera formed by several volcanic edifices, including the Solfatara volcano known for its fumaroles.
Della Ragione explained that the villa likely had thermal baths. "The proximity to the Water Grottos allows us to suppose that the discovered villa had thermal baths," he said. Adjacent to Lake Fusaro are the partially submerged remains of the Roman town of Baiae, a popular resort in antiquity that gained a reputation for a "hedonistic lifestyle." Roman aristocrats and emperors made Baiae a famous settlement of luxurious villas, as reported by HeritageDaily.
Those sumptuous palaces in Baiae also suffered from bradyseism, this time in a descending phase. The palaces ended up underwater, where their statues and mosaics can still be seen, according to 20 Minutos. According to Sextus Propertius, a poet of the Augustan age during the 1st century BCE, Baiae was a "vortex of luxury" and a "harbour of vice."
In this region, the first Greek colonies settled in the 8th century BCE. The Greek colonies named the area "Campi Ardenti" or "Campi Flegrei" due to its numerous volcanoes and steaming craters. The area of Lake Fusaro is part of the Campi Flegrei, an active volcanic region experiencing bradyseismic activity.
Mount Vesuvius reigns over the entire bay and is currently dormant. Very close to Bacoli, in the southern part of the Gulf of Naples, are the remains of other Roman cities with a tragic fate, including Pompeii and Herculaneum. These major population centers were devastated and buried under thick layers of ash and pumice during the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.