Parco Virgiliano

This guide to Parco Virgiliano in Naples starts with a strange question: what do you feed a slave who just broke your favorite cup? The answer belongs to Publius Vedius Pollio, a wealthy friend of the emperor Augustus, whose hidden villa Pausilypon once stood on the headland below, with a private theater and fish tanks holding moray eels some said he trained to eat men. When a cupbearer shattered a goblet at dinner, Pollio gave an order nobody at the table expected. Look down at the green headland of Gaiola, still hiding the villa's ruins beneath the pines.