Forum Baths of Cumae
About
Cumae's Forum Baths rank among the earliest purpose-built public bathhouses anywhere in the Roman world, tracing back to the city's early years under Roman rule. Bathers passed through a frigidarium fitted with two separate cold-water plunge pools before moving into the complex's warmer rooms. The building sat directly beside the forum, giving citizens easy access on their way through the civic center. Centuries of renovation kept the baths in active use, and Cumae's residents were still bathing on this same spot in 117 CE.
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 →