Piscina Mirabilis

The Piscina Mirabilis (Latin for "wondrous pool") is an Ancient Roman cistern on the Bacoli hill at the western end of the Gulf of Naples, southern Italy. It ranks as one of the largest ancient cisterns[1] built by the ancient Romans,[2][3] compared to the largest Roman reservoir, the Yerebatan Sarayi (aka Basilica Cistern) in Istanbul.

The Piscina Mirabilis
Piscina Mirabilis with Tyndall effect

The adjective Mirabilis was given by the 14th C. Tuscan poet Francesco Petrarca on one of his visits.[4][5]

Floor plan (Th. Rajola Arch, de. & Fiorillo, Sculp. 1768)

History

The Piscina Mirabilis was built under Augustus possibly to provide water to the Classis Misenensis in the nearby port of Misenum, which needed large quantities of fresh water for the base itself and for the ships.[6] As it lies 1 km away from the residential and military quarters at Misenum which lay beside each other and which were fed directly by the Aqua Augusta, it is also possible that the cistern belonged instead to one of the many luxurious villas built in this area, like the smaller Grotta della Dragonara and Cento Camerelle cisterns nearby.

The Piscina Mirabilis was supplied with water from the Aqua Augusta, built after 33 BC, which brought water to most of the sites around Naples.

A row of twelve small chambers with barrel vaults were added on the north-eastern side in the late 1st to early 2nd century to increase the usable capacity[7] and constructed in opus mixtum and opus vittatum. In one of them is a cocciopesto floor with labyrinth-shaped mosaic tesserae and a central white inlaid panel with limestone polychrome tiles, which seems to date to a more ancient phase.[8]

The cistern was definitively out of use when the Aqua Augusta was destroyed between the 4th and 5th century AD.[3]

Structure[2]

Testament to its monumentality are the dimensions: 15 metres (49 ft) high, 72 metres (236 ft) long, and 25 metres (82 ft) wide. The capacity is 12,600 cubic metres (440,000 cu ft),[1] amounting, in other words, to 12.6 million litres (3.33 million US gallons) of water, or roughly the size of 5 Olympic-size swimming pools.

It was built as a kind of hypostyle hall[9] on a quadrangular to obtain four rows of twelve cruciform pillars per row which divide the interior space into five long naves and thirteen courtyards (just as if it were a cathedral, hence its local nicknames of "the Water Cathedral"[3] or the "Cathedral of Bacoli"[2]). The 48 columns support a barrel vaulted ceiling covered by a roof terrace made of opus caementicium and paved in waterproof opus signinum.

The piscina had two entrances (AA), a staircase supported by three arches[4] in the north-west corner and one in the south-east, currently closed. The only one of the two staircases (CC) that still allows access to the main nave is the north-western staircase. Given the absence of holes visible from the outside, it is presumed that water was introduced through pipes coming from the North-West entrance (D). In the middle of the short central nave there is a 1.1 m deep basin (BB), hollowed out in the floor and provided with an outlet at one end,[7] which served as a so-called piscina limaria (waste-bath, i.e. a settling and drainage basin[7]) for the decantation, cleaning and periodic emptying of the cistern. Water was extracted from above through ancient hydraulic systems, exploiting the holes in the barrel vaults.

The walls and pillars of the pool are in opus reticulatum, with recourse to bricks for the walls and to tufelli [10] for the pillars. The latter are waterproofed with cocciopesto and the technique of smoothing the corners through curbs placed at their bases.

Water was pumped out of the cistern using machines placed on the roof terrace of the cistern, which were extended in the 1st century AD by adding a series of 12 supporting barrel-vaulted rooms on the north-west side.[9]

The materials used[2]

For the construction of the cistern, Roman engineers used to, at that time, mix flakes of raw tuff (extracted from the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff, produced by an eruption in the Phlegraean Fields of about 15,000 years ago), fresh water of hydrated lime and cocciopesto, the latter characterized by a mixture of lime, pozzolan and a part formed by broken-up tiles, bricks and crushed ceramics, able to give hydraulicity to lime. Extremely interesting is the composition of the adhesive cement mix, which results from the reaction of lime, cocciopesto, calcite, gypsum and tobermorite.

Restoration[2]
Engraving Joan. Baptista Natali del. & Joan. Volpato, scul. Venetiis (Tab. LXI)

A first restoration took place in the first half of the 20th century and focused more on consolidating some tuff pillars and vaults, and filling some cracks. The first work documented by the archives of the Soprintendenza is the completion of the excavations of the monument between 1910 and 1926, followed by the consolidation of the damaged walls. In 1926 a restoration of the damage of the second and third supporting arch was carried out at the time of the first nave, the surfaces of the pillars were restored with mortar lime and local pozzolan and the walls with new insertions of opus reticulatum. In 1929 work was carried out on the access staircase covered with a layer of cement and cocciopesto, 3 cm thick. In 1936 the consolidation work for the damaged arches continued with the reconstruction of the missing parts of the vaults, then repairing the extrados with cement and concrete. After this restoration, only in 2007 a new project was implemented to consolidate and waterproof the roof terrace of the monument.

Access

The ancient cistern is in private hands but is open to the public.

See also

Further reading

References
  1. "The Piscina mirabilis". Naples: Life, Death, and Miracles. Archived from the original on 25 May 2017. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
  2. Cucco, Mauro. "Piscina Mirabile". bacoli.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-03-26.
  3. "Piscina Mirabilis - Bacoli". www.piscinamirabilisbacoli.it. Retrieved 2023-03-25.
  4. Lucio (2017-07-20). "Piscina Mirabilis, perla archeologica di Bacoli". Napoli Turistica (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-03-26.
  5. "La Cattedrale dell'Acqua: alla scoperta della Piscina Mirabilis -". Meravigliosa Campania tour e gite scolastiche | turismo scolastico | (in Italian). 2023-01-12. Retrieved 2023-03-26.
  6. De Feo, G. & Napoli, R. M. A. 2007 Historical development of the Augustan aqueduct in Southern Italy: twenty centuries of works from Serino to Naples. Water Sci. Technol. Water Supply 7(1), 131–138
  7. "Piscina Mirabilis - Miseno". www.cir.campania.beniculturali.it (in Italian). Archived from the original on 7 March 2016.
  8. De Feo, G.; Napoli, R.M.A (2007-03-01). "Historical development of the Augustan Aqueduct in Southern Italy: twenty centuries of works from Serino to Naples". Water Supply. 7 (1): 131–138. doi:10.2166/ws.2007.015. ISSN 1606-9749.
  9. De Feo, Giovanni & De Gisi, Sabino & Malvano, Carmela & De Biase, O. (2010). The Greatest Water Reservoirs in the Ancient Roman World and the “Piscina Mirabilis” in Misenum. Water Science & Technology: Water Supply. vol. 10, issue 3, pp 350–358. Publication by IWA Publishing, 2010.
  10. Esposito, Daniela (1998). Tecniche costruttive murarie medievali: murature 'a tufelli' in area romana (in Italian). L'ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER. ISBN 978-88-7062-982-8.
  11. Paoli, Paolo Antonio (1768). "Remains of the Antiquities Existing in Puteoli, Cumae, and Baiae (translated)". Pdf available at the Library of Congress (USA) (in Italian and Latin). Naples. Retrieved 2023-04-03.

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