Saint-Saloine Baths, Saintes
About
These public baths once covered 8,000 square meters, making them one of the largest thermal establishments in Roman Aquitania, complete with a monumental caldarium and its own fountain. Bathers were already using the complex for decades by 117 CE, more than a century before the city abandoned it as Saintes drew back within tighter walls in the 3rd century. A Christian shrine to Saint Saloine later rose on the ruins. Coordinates are an approximate placement within the ancient city, pending a precise site geocoding.
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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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →