Welcome to the site Napoliforme

A unique testimony to the port and commercial districts of Puteoli is the Temple of Serapis or 'Serapeo', named after the statue of the Egyptian goddess found during excavations. The structure is actually one of the best known examples of a macellum, the Roman market dedicated to edible goods, built between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century AD and restored at the time of the Severan imperial dynasty (3rd century AD). The shops are lined up on either side of a large porticoed courtyard paved with marble, while on the far side an apsidal hall is dedicated to the worship of the emperor and the gods who protected the market (including Serapis, worshipped by the large colony of Alexandrian merchants who settled in the city). The three cipolin marble columns belong to the pronaos of this sacellum (sacred enclosure), which, with the bands of small holes dug around them by the lithodomys (marine molluscs that burrow into the stone) when bradyseism takes them underwater, are the most obvious indicators of the Phlegraean volcanic phenomenon. The sumptuous building is adorned with precious marble floors and a characteristic element is the large rotunda (tholos) in the centre of the courtyard, with a colonnade of sixteen African marble columns and friezes of marine animals on the base, materials and decorations of great value and cost.The sculptures found during the first excavations in the 18th century, at the time of King Charles of Bourbon (such as the statue of Serapis, the groups of Orestes and Electra and Dionysus with the faun) are in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.