Ancient Romans socialized, bathed, read, and gossiped in elaborate bathhouses, sometimes fed by famous aqueducts. No such facility has ever been discovered Croatia and south west england.
Now, a very large bath complex has been discovered in a more familiar location, in a private house in the legendary city of Pompeii. Archaeologists continue to excavate the city buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and continue to make new discoveries. Officials say it is the largest private spa facility ever discovered, rivaled only by Julia Felix’s Praedia, House of the Labyrinth, and Villa of Villa. Diomedes.
The bathhouse is directly connected to the large meeting hall, also known as the Black Hall. Opened to the public in April. What was done there was convincing guests to vote a certain way on the issue at hand, promoting the political candidacy of a friend or family member, or simply showing off the owner’s high social status. It was a spectacular event that could have helped.
A newly discovered cold room in the bath complex. Provided by Pompeii Archaeological Park.
The bathhouse consists of a calidarium, a tepidarium, a frigidarium (greenhouse, conservatory, cold room), and a changing room (or apodytherium), which can accommodate up to 30 people, judging by the size of the benches in the changing room. The porticoed courtyard that forms the cold room is approximately 30 feet by 30 feet and is centered around a large pool.
According to officials, the proximity of the bathhouse to the banquet hall is reminiscent of a passage from a Latin novel. Satyriconbelieved to have been written by Gaius Petronius in the late 1st century CE, involves the wealthy freedman Trimalchio hosting an elaborate dinner before the protagonists take a bath. The novel is set in a city in Campania in the 1st century AD, culturally no different from Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.
A changing room at a newly discovered bath facility in Pompeii. Provided by Pompeii Archaeological Park.
“The whole thing functioned as a ‘show’ performance, and at the center of it was the owner himself,” Gabriel Zstriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, said in a statement. “Third style paintings on the subject of the Trojan War, athletes on the portico – all were intended to give the space an atmosphere of Greekness – of culture, erudition and laziness. The portico with its large central pool and adjacent thermal facilities functioned to create the environment of a Greek gymnasium, as well as the athletic scenes added later. further emphasized by.
“And the audience, grateful and hungry, applauded the show put together by the host and talked about it for a long time after spending the evening in his ‘gymnasium. “Yes,” Zuchtriegel said.
This particular excavation posed a particular challenge, with several unstable architectural elements within the colonnade. Construction director Anna Onesti said in a statement that thanks to a temporary support structure that allows the authorities to excavate the entire portico and leave all the wall sections, the authorities will be able to bypass these elements and reach the floor level. He pointed out that he was able to do so. This structure will remain to protect the horizontal structure supported by columns until a future structural repair project begins.
