The crater of Vivara |
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| Geography | |
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| Location | Tyrrhenian Sea |
| Country | |
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Italy
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| Region | Campania |
| Province | Naples |
Vivara is a satellite islet of Procida, one of the three main islands in the Gulf of Naples. (The other two are Ischia and Capri.)
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Vivara flanks Procida to the south-west and is connected to it by a bridge. Vivara is a crescent-shaped remnant ridge of an ancient volcanic crater, part of the Phlegraean Fields. It is now a nature reserve of 35.63 ha, established under D.M. 24.06.02. In 1905, Giuseppe De Lorenzo described it thus :
What remains without darkness and without mysteries, outside the doubt and eternal uncertainty of scientific analysis, limpid and clear in the light of day, is the pure aesthetic vision of the crater Vivara, rising from the crashing sea with a sweet and harmonious form, its cliffs hues of hot colours, expressing from her breast a green mantle of herbs and plants, on which laughs a perpetual spring.
Recent archaeological digs have uncovered fragments of Mycenaean pottery, left by Greeks who were there many centuries before the Ancient Greeks colonized the bay.