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Stabios
Castellammare di Stabia
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Stabios is Stabiae, now Castellammare di Stabia, where the Elder Pliny died in 79 AD: he had sailed across the bay to watch the eruption of Vesuvius and to help friends, and was overcome on the shore, as his nephew describes in a famous letter. Sulla had destroyed the old town in 89 BC, after which Stabiae became a summer retreat for the rich, whose painted seaside villas above the town can still be visited. A new town rose there a decade after the eruption.