Cumae

The Battle of Mount Gaurus, 343 BC, was the first battle of the First Samnite War and also the first battle fought between the Roman Republic and the Samnites. The battle is described by the Roman historian Livy (59 BC – AD 17) as part of Book Seven of his history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, where he narrates how the Roman consul Marcus Valerius Corvus won a hard-fought battle against the Samnites at Mount Gaurus, near Cumae, in Campania. Modern historians however believe that most, if not all, of the detail in Livy's description has been invented by him or his sources.

The Grotta di Cocceio (Cocceius' Tunnel) is an ancient Roman tunnel nearly a kilometre in length connecting Lake Avernus with Cumae and dating from 38-36 BC. It was burrowed through the tuff stone of Monte Grillo by the architect Lucius Cocceius Auctus at the command of Agrippa who was in the process of converting the Lake into a military port, the Portus Julius.The tunnel was wide enough to allow the passage of two wagons. The Avernus side of the passage was decorated with a colonnade and had many statues in niches hewn into the tuff walls of the entrance. Light and air were provided by six vertical shafts dug into the hill (the longest of which was over thirty metres high) The Aqua Augusta aqueduct supplying the port was dug in a tunnel parallel to and on the northern side the road and was also equipped with niches and vertical shafts. The Crypta Romana tunnel was also built nearby from Cumae to its port in the same period, as well as other tunnels in the vicinity (e.g. the Crypta Neapolitana). With the end of the civil war between Octavian and Mark Antony in 31 BC and the displacement of the fleet from Portus Julius to the port of Misenum in 12 BC, the tunnels lost their strategic interest, but continued to be useful for practical and commercial reasons. The tunnel is also known as the Grotta della Pace, in reference to a Spanish captain, Pietro de Pace, who made use of the tunnel in 1508–1509 to plunder the ruins of Cumae, which, at the time, still bore many rich items. The Grotta was heavily damaged during World War II and is no longer open to the public. It has undergone extensive restoration works in recent years (up to 2017) and should be reopened in the near future. However, colonies of five species of legally-protected bats were discovered during the restoration, making an environmental assessment necessary before the reopening can go through.

Licola is an area in the province of Naples which takes its name from Lago dei Follicoli, a lake which formerly occupied most of the area. The current population of Licola ranges between 4,000 and 5,000. Licola is a strip of land facing the sea, and is roughly three kilometers by ten kilometers in size. It begins at the foot of Mount Cuma and ends in Marina di Varcaturo. The Licola area is divided between two municipalities. In particular, the southern part is divided between the villages Licola Center (also known as Licola Village) and Licola Lido (also known as Lido di Licola) of the municipality (or comune) of Pozzuoli, bordering the Arco Felice section of the municipality. The northern part, Licola Mare, is part of the hamlet of Varcaturo, which is a section of the municipality of Giugliano, part of the constituency of Licola-Lago Patria. The town revolves around Piazza San Massimo, which is the oldest square in the town.

Lake Avernus (Italian: Lago d'Averno) is a volcanic crater lake located in the Avernus crater in the Campania region of southern Italy, around 4 kilometres (2+1⁄2 miles) west of Pozzuoli. It is near the volcanic field known as the Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei) and comprises part of the wider Campanian volcanic arc. The lake is roughly circular, measuring two kilometres (1+1⁄4 mi) in circumference and 60 metres (200 ft) deep.

Lake Fusaro (Italian: Lago di Fusaro, Latin: Acherusia Palus, Ancient Greek: Ἀχερουσία λίμνη, romanized: Acherousia limne) is a lake situated in the province of Naples, Italy, in the territory of the community of Bacoli. It is about 0.5 miles (800 m) from Baia, and about 1 mile (1.6 km) from the acropolis of Cumae. It is separated from the sea by a narrow coastal strip. It is a very unusual ecosystem of great interest, characterized by a variety of vegetation specific to the region.

Lucrinus Lacus or Lucrine Lake (Italian: Lago di Lucrino; Neapolitan: Laco 'e Lucrine) is a lake in Campania, southern Italy. It is less than one kilometre to the south of Lake Avernus and is separated from the Gulf of Pozzuoli by a narrow strip of land. Also known as the maricello ("little sea"), the size of present-day Lago Lucrino was significantly reduced by the rise of the volcanic cone of Monte Nuovo in 1538. The lake's modern dimensions are 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) long and about 5 metres (16 ft) deep.The recorded history of Lucrinus Lacus dates back to Sergius Orata, who is credited with creating the first oyster beds there. The lake was also a resort destination for residents of Baiae (cf. Martial i. 62). Its banks were covered with villas, of which the best known was Cicero's villa Cumanum on the east bank, which was the seat of his Academia. The remnants of this villa, and the nearby village of Tripergole, disappeared beneath ejecta from the eruption of Monte Nuovo in 1538. According to a history by Tacitus, Agrippina the Younger was murdered by the emperor Nero's assassins in her villa on the shores of Lucrinus Lacus in AD 59 after escaping an unsuccessful murder attempt while sailing on another craft nearby.The Via Herculanea and a railway traverse the strip of land between the lake and the Gulf of Pozzuoli. The ancient Via Herculanea road ran on a strip of land parallel and further to seaward from the present one and now submerged, which Strabo credited to Heracles with constructing. This strip was reinforced with a sea wall and then opened by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa to make a harbour of Lucrinus Lacus. He then joined Lucrinis Lacus to Lago d'Averno by a canal, as recorded in Virgil's Georgics, providing a sheltered harbour known as Portus Julius for the Roman western fleet, invisible from the sea.Today Lucrino is a frazione of the comune of Pozzuoli.

Monte Nuovo ("New Mountain") is a cinder cone volcano within the Campi Flegrei caldera, near Naples, southern Italy. A series of damaging earthquakes and changes in land elevation preceded its only eruption, during the most recent part of the Holocene, which lasted from September 29 to October 6, 1538, when it was formed. The event is important in the history of science because it was the first eruption in modern times to be described by a large number of witnesses. The eruptive vent formed next to the medieval village of Tripergole on the shores of the then-much larger Lake Lucrino. The thermal bath village, which had been inhabited since ancient Roman times and was home to notable Roman-era buildings including Cicero's villa, was completely buried by ejecta from the new cinder cone. Tripergole's ruins and its important thermal springs completely disappeared under Monte Nuovo such that the exact location of the village can no longer be identified.Volcanologists feared another eruption between 1969 and 1984, when there were again earthquakes and changes in land elevations in the area.In September 2023, after an earthquake, concerns over a possible eruption were again raised by volcanologists.

Pozzuoli (Italian pronunciation: [potˈtswɔːli]; Latin: Puteoli) is a city and comune of the Metropolitan City of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. It is the main city of the Phlegrean Peninsula.

Portus Julius (alternatively spelled in the Latin Iulius) was the first harbour specifically constructed to be a base for the Roman western naval fleet, the classis Misenensis. The port was located near Baiae and protected by the Misenum peninsula at the north-western end of the Gulf of Naples. Portus Julius was named in honour of Octavian's great-uncle and adoptive father, Julius Caesar and the Julian clan.

Fortino Tenaglia Lighthouse (Italian: Faro di Fortino Tenaglia) is an active lighthouse located on a promontory on the west side of the Gulf of Pozzuoli in the municipality of Bacoli, Campania on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The Gulf of Pozzuoli (Italian: Golfo di Pozzuoli; Neapolitan: Gurfo 'e Pezzulo), formerly known as the Gulf of Puteoli, is a large bay or small gulf in the northwestern end of the Gulf of Naples in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lies west of Naples and is named for its port of Pozzuoli. The Roman Sinus Baianus was located within it, near the resort town of Baiae. Along with the island of Ischia and gulfs of Naples and Gaeta, local waters are rich in productions enough to support various species of whales and dolphins, including fin and sperm whales.

Monte di Procida a small comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples in the Italian region of Campania, located about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) west of Naples, facing the island of Procida. Monte di Procida includes the small island of San Martino, which was occupied by the Germans during World War II. Its territory is included in the Campi Flegrei Regional Park.