Area Marina Protetta Parco Sommerso di Gaiola

This guide to the Area Marina Protetta Parco Sommerso di Gaiola in Naples opens at a dinner hosted by the Roman knight Publius Vedius Pollio for his friend the emperor Augustus, the moment a slave drops a crystal cup and Pollio orders him thrown into a pool of flesh-eating moray eels while Augustus tells him to stop. It follows the ruins of Pollio's villa, called Pausilypon, the place that ends pain, built into this stretch of coast and dragged underwater over centuries by the region's slow seismic sinking. You can still swim or kayak the protected water over its sunken piers and roads, or take the glass-bottomed boat if you would rather stay dry.