The most singular monument of Pozzuoli is the macellum, or the public market, better known as the Temple of Serapis for the discovery of the statue of the Greek-Egyptian god seated on a throne with the calathos on his head, a basket, symbol of abundance and fertility.
It was built between the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd century and restored in the Severan period (3rd century); it consisted of shops disposed around a large courtyard surrounded by arcades and a marble floor. It definitely is a majestic building, in the center of the current city, but it is also known for having been, over the years, the index of the bradyseism of the area: on its columns, in fact, the holes dug in the stone by lithodomes, singular marine molluscs that find refuge in the hardest rocks by piercing through with their acid secretion, when the phenomenon caused its sinking. Then it re-emerged, due to the characteristic breath of the earth, particularly accentuated in this part of the Phlegraean area.
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