The East Baths, Bath
About
Underfloor hypocaust channels drove heat from wood-fired furnaces beneath a raised floor, warming bathers through rooms running from tepid to scorching hot. Water drawn straight from the adjoining Great Bath fed a lukewarm pool here before visitors worked up to the sweat rooms proper. The suite's original timber-roofed form already stood by 117 CE, part of the same first-generation building campaign as the Great Bath itself.
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
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 →