Roman baths

Bathing was part of daily life in a Roman town. Most towns had at least one public bath and many had several; the Romans called the great public complexes thermae and the smaller baths, public or private, balneae. They were places to wash, but also to meet friends, exercise and read. Water came from a river or, in towns, from an aqueduct, and was heated by furnaces and channelled into the hot room, the caldarium; a visitor passed through a sequence of changing rooms, warm and hot rooms and a cold pool. Baths were also built for wealthy villas, town houses and forts.

The baths in this atlas range from town bath-houses to a whole spa town. At Salona the Great Thermae of the eastern city keep the plan of their pools, changing rooms and hot rooms. Aquae Iasae, in northern Croatia, grew up around a hot sulphur spring: its baths, forum and temples are excavated in the middle of today’s spa town of Varaždinske Toplice, and the spring still steams in its Roman basin. Butrint and Doclea also have excavated bath buildings among the ruins of their towns.