Public Baths of Caesaraugusta
About
A porticoed thermal pool complex built early in the Julio-Claudian era (Caligula/Claudius, c. 37-54 CE), replacing an earlier set of 1st-century-BCE public latrines demolished to make way for it. By Trajan and Hadrian's time it had been operating for the better part of a century and would keep going for two more before closing in the 4th century. Coordinates are estimated from the museum's street address; no source gave precise GPS figures.
What happened here
The furnaces are lit before dawn and the water is hot by the eighth hour, which is when the town arrives. The circuit is a habit: undress and hand your clothes to an attendant who may or may not be watching them, exercise in the courtyard, sweat in the hot room, scrape the oil and dirt off with a curved bronze strigil, then the warm pool and the cold plunge. Entry costs a coin small enough that almost nobody is priced out, and on a benefactor's birthday it is free. There is food, drink, ball games, gambling, hair-plucking, business and shouting; a writer complaining about the noise from the flat above is complaining about all of it. Men and women bathe at different hours, or in separate wings.
Sources
Nearby
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