Thermae Suburbanae
About
Built in the early 1st century CE as a gift to the town by its greatest benefactor, Marcus Nonius Balbus (ex-tribune, ex-consul, ex-proconsul of Crete), who split the complex off from his own adjoining residence; damaged in the 62 CE earthquake and subsequently expanded with an open-air pool and nymphaeum. Widely regarded as the best-preserved Roman bath building anywhere, buried by the 79 CE pyroclastic flows and only fully excavated/opened in the 20th-21st centuries. Destroyed in the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius, 38 years before this map's snapshot — included as it's an essential part of the story.
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
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 →