Public bathing 19 BC had a rotunda 25 metres across, circled by small rooms, set in a park with artificial river and pool. By AD 300 the Baths of Diocletian would cover , its soaring granite and porphyry sheltering 3,000 bathers a day. Roman baths became "something like a cross between an aquacentre and a theme park", with pools, game rooms, gardens, even libraries and theatres. One of the most famous public bath sites is Aquae Sulis in Bath, England. Dr. Garrett G Fagan, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, described public bathing as a "social event" for the Romans in his
Insula (Roman city) forum around which the most important public buildings would be sited. Insula (Roman city) An insula (Latin for "island") is a city block in an ancient Roman city plan, i.e. one that is surrounded by four streets. The term was also used for apartment buildings that took up an entire city block. A standard Roman city plan was based on a grid of orthogonal streets and was probably founded on the ancient Greek model of Hippodamus and was used when new cities were established, e.g. in Roman coloniae. The main streets of each city would be the Decumanus Maximus (east–west-oriented)