Welcome to the site Napoliforme

The entire coastline of Sorrento in Roman times is occupied by the imposing villa (1st century BC) built into the tuffaceous rock overlooking the sea. The foundations of the maritime constructions, the nymphaea and the fishponds of the villa of Agrippa Postumo, partly submerged by the sea, remain the absolute protagonists of the Sorrento coastline. Over the centuries, at the top of the cliff, the Roman domus has given way to 19th-century villas and to the buildings of a convent and a luxury hotel, but at sea level it is still possible to admire the ruins, visit the large pools, probably intended for fish farming, and the nymphaeums, which are highly evocative and partly submerged by rising water and accessible from the sea. The maritime part of the villa was one of the most important and scenic elements of the complex, with the two nymphaea (major and minor), dug into the tuffaceous ridge, covered and paved with mosaics and lava stone and decorated with water features.The villa belonged to the Emperor Augustus' grandson, Agrippa Postumo's mother was Julia, Augustus' only daughter, and his father was Agrippa, a general and trusted friend of the Emperor, many years older than his wife. Born after his father's death, and to this we owe the addition of 'Postumus' to his name, he went down in history as an eternal adolescent, prey to excessive passions and madness, driven away (or perhaps imprisoned) by his grandfather in the golden exile of the magnificent villa perched on the tufa cliffs overlooking the gulf and assassinated, for dynastic reasons, on the death of Augustus.