In the Aragonese Castle of Baia is located the Archaeological Museum of the Phlegraean Fields, emblem of this Land of the Myth.
The castle was built in a strategic position on a tuff promontory, to dominate the entire Gulf of Pozzuoli and that arm of the sea including the three Neapolitan islands. It was built on the ruins of a Roman villa its remains can be seen from the sea) and was an exemplary fortification for the time, with walls, moats and drawbridges, in fact impregnable. Its construction began, with other works of the defensive system ordered by King Alfonso of Aragon, in 1495, in anticipation of the invasion of Charles VIII. The viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo had extension works carried out between 1538 and 1550.
The reconstruction of the famous Sacello degli Augustali is housed in two large rooms of the museum; a series of plaster casts recovered in the baths of Sosandra (some dozen fragments attributable to well-known Greek original pieces in bronze) and a splendid copy of Aphrodite, which was found in Miseno in 1980. Among the statues, the equestrian one of Minerva, of Titus and Vespasian, plates and engravings.
Inside, the splendid and famous Triclinium-Ninfeo of Punta Epitaffio has been reconstructed, the sumptuous imperial dining room, surrounded by sculptural busts, spectacular recreations of environments and a rich decoration of sculptures, such as Ulysses with his companions and the Cyclops Polyphemus.
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