Great South Baths of Conimbriga
About
The largest bath complex in the town, fed by the aqueduct running down from Alcabideque, generally dated to the end of the 1st century CE — consistent with the town's other known Flavian-era building campaigns (forum, House of Cantaber). By Hadrian's accession this bathhouse would have been a well-worn fixture of daily civic life. Documentation pinning down its construction phase is thinner than for the town's flagship monuments, hence the lower confidence.
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
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