Posillipo

This guide to Posillipo in Naples uncovers a Roman theater seating close to two thousand, carved into the hillside by the nobleman Publius Vedius Pollio after his retirement following the Battle of Actium. It follows the villa he built above the Bay of Naples, the fish ponds and baths that came with it, and his guest Emperor Augustus, whose reaction to Pollio's cruelty became notorious. From there it jumps two thousand years to the Dutch painter Anton Sminck van Pitloo, who arrived around 1815 to paint this same coastline in natural light, and the movement of artists who followed him.