Cumae (Cuma)

Cumae (Cuma), near Bacoli in the volcanic Campi Flegrei west of Naples, is the oldest Greek colony on the Italian mainland, traditionally founded by settlers from Euboea around 740-730 BC. From Cumae, Greek culture and the Euboean alphabet spread to the Italic and Etruscan peoples, making the site pivotal to the transmission of writing in early Italy. The colony controlled the surrounding coast for centuries before falling to the Samnites and then to Rome, under which it remained an important town through late antiquity. The most famous monument is the Antro della Sibilla, the Cave of the Cumaean Sibyl, a long trapezoidal gallery cut into the tufa with a row of side openings that admit dramatic shafts of light. Identified in 1932 by archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri, it is traditionally associated with the prophetess whose oracle, in Virgil's Aeneid, guides Aeneas to the underworld. The site rises across a lower and an upper acropolis. The lower town preserves the forum, baths, an amphitheatre and the so-called Crypta Romana, a Roman road tunnel. On the acropolis stand the terraced remains of the Temple of Apollo and, higher up, the Temple of Jupiter, both later converted into early Christian basilicas, with a baptismal font surviving among the ruins. Commanding views stretch over the Tyrrhenian coast and the Phlegraean Fields, a landscape of craters, lakes and ancient ruins shaped by ongoing volcanism. Part of the Parco Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei and cared for by the Italian heritage authority, Cumae is quieter than the great sites of the Bay of Naples, and its layered Greek, Roman and early Christian remains, set among Mediterranean scrub, reward a contemplative visit of an hour or two for those interested in the origins of Greek Italy.