The structure, so named by the sixteenth-seventeenth-century antiquarian, also designed by Giuliano Sangallo due to its architectural interest, is the terminus of the Serino aqueduct, built during the Augustan age to supply water to the military base and the city of Misenum. The building, constructed on the hill overlooking the port of Misenum to supply water to the Classis Praetoria Misenensis, is actually a huge cistern with a capacity of 12,600 cubic meters, quadrangular in shape, excavated in tuff with four rows of twelve cruciform pillars that divide the internal space into five long and thirteen short aisles, supporting the barrel vault. On this vault rests the paved terrace floor in cocciopesto, connected to the interior by a series of hatches. The masonry structures are made in opus reticulatum with brick courses for the side walls and tufelli for the pillars. A basin 1.10 m deep, hollowed out in the floor of the central short aisle and equipped with an outlet at one end, served as a silt basin, that is, a settling and drainage tank for the cleaning and periodic emptying of the cistern, whose supply occurred through an inlet conduit located near the entrance on the western side; a series of windows opened along the side walls provided lighting and ventilation. Water was lifted onto the upper terrace through the hatches using hydraulic machines and from there channeled. Attached externally to the north-east side are twelve small vaulted rooms with barrel vaults whose walking floor is 1.80 m lower than the spring of the cistern vault. Built in opus mixtum and listatum, equipped with a cocciopesto cordon at the base of the pillars, these rooms represent an enhancement of the hydraulic system carried out between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century AD.
Information about Piscina Mirabilis
Via Piscina Mirabile
80070 Bacoli (Naples)
0815233199
ssba-na@beniculturali.it
https://www.archeona.beniculturali.it
Source: MIBACT
