Frontispiece of the first volume of "Principles of Geology" by Charles Lyell in the year 1830. The drawing portrays the archaeological remains of Macellum de Pozzuoli.
Macellum di Pozzuoli is an archaeological site located in the city of the same name (Pozzuoli), in the province of Naples. Due to the double interest that it generates, scientific and archaeological, it is one of the most important points of the ancient world. The building, which dates from the Flavian period, has long been improperly called the Temple of Serapis, for the discovery of a statue of the Egyptian god in 1750, at the time of the first excavations. Later studies have found that it is the place where the old Macellum was located, that is, the public market of the Roman Pozzuoli.
The marks left by a species of bivalve molluscs in three of the remaining columns indicate that the site sank below sea level to re-emerge later. The study of this phenomenon in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries supported the theories that the earth's crust could move slowly (and therefore, the age of the earth was much greater than generally accepted) , against the theory of catastrophism that claimed that the structure of the earth was due to violent phenomena. Structure Outline of a Greek tholos
The group, which dates between the I and II century AD, of considerable size (a total length of 75 meters and a width of almost 60), looks like a square courtyard, surrounded by a porch which went through the top of the stores; two public toilets are located on the sides of the apse of the lower part, while the remains of the stairs that lead to the upper floor of the portico are conserved on both sides, which faced the port; finally, in the center of the courtyard there is a raised circular building, once surrounded by columns (perhaps covered by a dome or conical roof, called tholos), in which you could climb the podium with four stairs arranged in a cross. / p>
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