Of the vast building, a theater is particularly preserved, whose semicircle, facing south, features a ima cavea divided into three wedges and a media cavea added later, both accessible via side stairs inserted into turrets, as well as the orchestra.
The stage area also includes a pool perpendicular to the cavea, around which was a garden enclosed by a curved wall. Above this area is another rectangular garden surrounded by a porticus triplex which also formed the stage of the nearby odeion.
This second performance building belonging to the villa was actually a space dedicated to poetry readings, rhetoric, or concerts, composed of six steps and a quadrangular cavea, as well as a large apsed hall located in the center of the media cavea, with a podium bearing a statue. From the residential quarter, equipped with representative rooms, some of the thermal rooms are still visible, particularly the calidarium.
The architectural complex, dating back to the 1st century BC with subsequent building interventions carried out in the imperial era, belonged to the Roman knight Publius Vedius Pollio. A controversial and wealthy freedman of origin, economic advisor to Augustus in the reorganization of the province of Asia, who upon his death left all his properties to the emperor, including the villa on the Gulf of Naples which he called Pausylipon (from the Greek etymology meaning “that frees from worries”).
From Posillipo, a tunnel, the so-called Grotta di Seiano attributed to Lucius Aelius Seianus, a general and friend of Tiberius, carved out of tuff for approximately 800 meters, crossed the promontory connecting the Neapolitan side of the coast with that of Coroglio towards the Phlegraean Fields.
