Roman Public Baths: a brief architectural and social overview

Abstract

Bathing practices in Roman public establishments comprised a long period of time during which they were transformed, incorporating new dimensions and activities, diversifying their clientele, and going far beyond mere hygiene. The apex of this process was the great imperial baths of the third century, but their success did not entail the disappearance of the small baths that we can call “neighbourhood baths”, which continued to attract huge numbers in the hundreds of establishments recorded by the written sources. These multiple experiences are materialised in the buildings that housed them, whose traces have come down to us in varying states of preservation, and in some cases, not even that. Understanding the variety of possibilities offered to bathers in Rome in the first centuries of our era implies going beyond examining the grandiose ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. The systematic study of thermal architecture is fundamental to the comprehension of the process of implantation and transformation of this typically Roman practice, and for many decades it was practically the only approach scholars adopted. However, the mere description of the sequence of rooms, and of the technical advances that made their remarkable evolution possible, does not manage to cover the diverse possibilities of this daily experience. It is necessary to resort to the written sources, and epigraphy, for the missing elements in order to reach what lay at its centre: the bather. To do so implies taking risks, certainly, because each category has limitations of imprecision, contradiction, and incompleteness. But it is in this confrontation that our best chance of approaching the most complete experience lies.