Thermae Imperiales
About
Constantius Chlorus began these baths for his new imperial residence at the end of the third century, and work halted around 316 CE with the complex never finished as a bathhouse. The caldarium apses still rise 19 meters, and service tunnels run beneath the entire site like a second city. They postdate the 117 CE snapshot by nearly two centuries. Later builders converted the unfinished shell into barracks and then into a city gate.
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 →