Back to the index of architecture

Introduction

Each Roman city had to have at least one bathhouse, because few Roman houses had their own bath. The entrance fee of a bathhouse wasn't high; Children for free.

The bathhouse

Often the bathhouses consisted of several baths. In the bathhouses they had: a cold bath, a lukewarm bath, a warm bath, a sweating-room, libraries, shops, "cafe's", a sportingroom, gardens and a massage-room. The men and the women didn't bathe together. In some bathhouses were seperate divisions. If a bathhouse didn't have this, men and women bathed after each other. The women in the morning and the men in the afternoon. The imperial bathhouses were the biggest.

The reason

In a bathhouse, they could refresh themselves and they could met friends. They also could sport and they could get a massage. When they sported, they first oiled themselves with olive oil, because after the sportexercises they could easiely scrape the oil with sweat and dirt of their body with a strigilis, a scraper.

Heater

This is the way they heat a bath: The slaves feeded the fire(8). The warm air of this fire streamed under the bath, follow the red bolts (on the picture). The warm air could stream there, because the bath was build above the ground on little pillars(7). The big tiles(6) and the Mortelfloor(5) of the bath were heated and thus the water in the bath. The warm air also streamed between the outer wall(1) with the stuccolayers(2) and the painted stucco-work(4) through the wall-heaterpipes(3). This was the way they heated the walls. They slaves had to take care of the bathheater, they also had to clean the baths and keep it clean, they had to be the masseur and they had to bring clean towels.

Back to the index of architecture