This is an excerpt for Episode 3: Caserta: A Palace & Pizza from the Dream of Italy Season 3 Travel Guide. Get your own PDF copy here.
Like Rome, Capua was an important center of gladiator battles. Its 60,000-seat amphitheater (Anfiteatro Campano), second only in size to the Colosseum, housed the first and most prominent gladiator school—Spartacus even trained here. Anfiteatro Campano is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Local tour guide Cecilia Scatola took Kathy to the amphitheater and to a mithraeum, an ancient site of worship of the Persian god Mithras. The mithraeum, built around 200 A.D., features a fresco of Mithras slaying a bull, depicting an important tenet of this ancient religion that shares some parallels with Christianity. The mithraeum is open to the public, but reservations must be made at least one day in advance by calling the ticket office at +31 338 6353806.