The views and architecture of Baiae were so memorable that they inspired scenes to be depicted on ancient glass flasks made for visitors (probably in Puteoli in the late 3rd to early 4th century AD) many of which have been found scattered throughout the empire, and today kept in many museums[4] notably in Populonia,[5] Empúries and Warsaw.

[6] Baiae was said to have been named after Baius (Ancient Greek: Βαῖος, Baîos), the helmsman of Odysseus's ship in Homer's Odyssey, who was supposedly buried nearby.

[8] Baiae was built on the Cumaean Peninsula in the Phlegraean Fields, an active volcanic area, on the side of an ancient crater sloping down to the shore.

In 56 BC, the prominent socialite Clodia was condemned by the defence at the trial of Marcus Caelius Rufus as living as a harlot in Rome and at the "crowded resort of Baiae", indulging in beach parties and long drinking sessions.

[9] The resorts sometimes capitalised on their imperial associations: Suetonius mentions in his history that the cloak, brooch, and gold bulla given to the young Tiberius by Pompey's daughter Pompeia Magna were still on display around AD 120.

Caligula ordered a 3-mile-long pontoon bridge to be built from impounded ships of the area, fastened together and weighted with sand, stretching from Baiae to the neighbouring port of Puteoli.

[12] Cassius Dio's Roman History also includes the event, with the detail that the emperor ordered resting places and lodging rooms with potable water erected at intervals along the bridge.

[17] In the early 6th century, the Ostragothic king Athalaric admired the beauty of the area for its bay, the quality of its oysters and baths of natural waters with health restoring powers.

It was deserted owing to recurrent malaria by 1500,[citation needed] but Pedro de Toledo erected a castle, the Castello di Baia, in the 16th century.

The statue of the "Aphrodite of Baiae", a variant of the Venus de Medici, was supposedly excavated sometime before 1803, when the English antiquary Thomas Hope began displaying it in his gallery on Duchess Street in London.

A cache of plaster casts of Hellenistic sculptures was discovered in the cellar of the Baths of Sosandra at Baiae; they are now displayed at the town's archaeological museum.

[9] The public and private baths of Baiae were filled with warm mineral water directed to their pools from underground hot springs, as many still are today.

[27]"The so-called "Temple of Mercury"[28] contains a large 21.5 m (71 ft) diameter dome, the largest in the world prior to the construction of Rome's Pantheon in 128 AD.

Indeed domes with the same design as this building can be found in Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, for example the Vestibule of the Piazza d'Oro (Golden Square) and the so-called Serapeum.

[38] The perimeter had a forecourt annex of exceptional architectural innovation, with a groundplan of 9 equal circles within a bounding square of 15 m sides and three circular rooms.

It is named after the ambulatio, the long corridor with two longitudinal naves on the second terrace, intended to be a covered walk with large openings with a magnificent panorama of the gulf below.

Above the peristyle are several residential rooms, once richly finished, particularly the original precious mosaic floors representing theatrical masks inside geometric frames.

Below this level is a semicircular building surmounted by five vaulted rooms once hidden by a façade decorated with niches and columns, overall making an impressive composition.

This triclinium-nymphaeum (banquet hall) is identified as a room of Claudius's villa, a complex arranged in terraces from the top of the promontory extending into the sea up to about 400 m offshore.

A horseshoe-shaped marble bed at the end of the pool is a stibadium, a convivial dining couch like the one described by Pliny for his villa;[44] this was placed between the water channel that ran around the walls and the large central basin.

Water gushed from some statues placed in the niches on the long sides of the triclinium and from that of Baios (Ulysses' helmsman) in the apse, by means of small lead tubes inserted into the marble.

The main statuary group was housed in the apse dominating the hall of which the figure of Ulysses survives, represented in the act of offering Polyphemus the cup of wine, and one of his companions carrying the skin.

Of the eight statues in the side niches, four were in an excellent state of conservation: two are in keeping with the intended use of the room as a banquet hall, being figures of the young Dionysus with a clear reference to the Odyssey group in the apse.

At the beginning of the 4th century the palace began to be flooded by the sea due to bradyseism and the majority of wall decorations as well as lead pipes were removed.

[45] The sculptures were transferred to the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei [it] in the Castle of Baia, while copies were placed in their original position in the submerged site.

[48] It was built around a large peristyle courtyard garden (viridarium) of 95 x 65 m, the entire residential complex occupying an area of 120x160 m. The spectacular northern facade probably opened onto a park that separated the villa from the Palace of Claudius and two thermal baths as well as a vast maritime district with piers, docks, fishponds and pleasant lodging pavilions.

[49] Of particular interest is the vast western basin (80 x 110 m) used as a landing place for large boats and protected to the south from the Sirocco winds by a series of double-row pilae.

In this case it had two stuccoed columns that edged two short parting walls built on the sides of the threshold with doorways to the ostiarius quarters (gatekeeper's lodge).