The baths of Caracalla are particularly well known as huge portions of them are still visible on the south side of Rome. For many years they have been used as a stage set for summer operas and great concerts such as “The Three Ten
The baths of Caracalla are particularly well known as huge portions of them are still visible on the south side of Rome. For many years they have been used as a stage set for summer operas and great concerts such as “The Three Tenors” with Pavarotti.
But ancient Rome actually sported a number of such baths built at different times by different emperors as a means of heightening the quality of life of their own citizens whilst at the same time benefitting from great propaganda for themselves.
The bathing tradition of ancient Rome seems to date back to at least the third century BC at which time cronicles tell us that the rural population would come to the city not only for the weekly market at the Forums but also in order to give themselves a wash/bathe. As a consequence it is not surprising that a great number of private entrepreneurs would own baths called balneae to which access could be purchased at a small price. Around 33BC there were as many as 170 balneae in the city.
Real downward pressure was put on access prices when Agrippa (Emperor Augustus‘ right hand man) built and inaugurated the first public baths called Thermae in the year 19BC: An excellent example of Augustus’ renovation plans for the city and of his own propagandistic agenda. This example set the standard for all emperors who followed.
Some of the baths of ancient Rome included:
- The baths of Agrippa (thermae agrippae) – built at the time of Augustus, next to the Pantheon. These likely started more as a sort of sauna with a cold plunge rather than the fully articulated Roman baths we think of. It was only after the completion of the Aqua Virgo acqueduct in 19BC that they were converted into a complete set of baths.
- Nero’s baths of 62AD, the first in the genre of Roman imperial baths as we would recognise them with an architecture articulated across a symmetrical axis.
- Baths of Titus (80AD) who used the famous architect Apollodorus of Damascus and incorporated parts of Nero’s Domus Aurea.
- Trajan built others on top (104-109AD).
- Commodus built new ones about eighty years later.
- Septimius Severus also added his own name to the list (around 200AD).
- Then we have those of Caracalla (225AD).
Later emperors followed a slightly different strategy of creating smaller local baths rather than one huge complex.
Other famous Roman baths are those at Bath (UK) and Hadrian’s Villa (at Tivoli near Rome). In Rome it is worth visiting the baths of Caracalla we mentioned above and the baths of Diocletian which survived thanks to being transformed into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli by Michelangelo in 1563. A little more is said about these below.
From the point of view of architecture and Rome’s urban development Emperor Nero was an innovator. He was responsible for the first monumental Roman baths built in Rome (though built after those of Agrippa), close to the Pantheon, around 62-64AD. They were built at the same time as or shortly after the Palaestra (gymnasium for athletics) as part of his grand plan to orientalise Roman culture – hand in hand with the shift towards a more despotic ruling style.
The complex was constructed around a symmetrical axis facing north, measuring approximately 190x120meters in size, ie covering over two hectares (5 acres) between what we now know as the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. They were rebuilt in 227AD by emperor Alexander Severus who renamed them the Thermae Alexandrinae.
Passages from Martial make it clear that they were amongst the more notable monuments of the city and indeed a very popular recreational resort.
|Book 2, 48Coponem laniumque balneumque, |
Tonsorem tabulamque calculosque
Et paucos, sed ut eligam, libellos:
Unum non nimium rudem sodalem Et grandem puerum diuque levem
Et caram puero meo puellam:
Haec praesta mihi, Rufe, vel Butuntis,
Et thermas tibi habe Neronianas.
|A wine-merchant, a. bu