Bath, United Kingdom

An obvious city to visit for anyone looking for Roman remains. This city was known for its amazing water and fresh springs so the Romans decided to build a huge bathing complex. Once again--all photographs taken inside the Bath museum are of things owned by the museum and I claim no credit for their magnificence.

The local goddess was called Sulis and the Romans united her with Minerva and dedicated the building complex to Sulis Minerva. Convenient, no?

Here is the spring as it looks now. You can see the minerals in the water changes the color a bit. It felt warm and inviting.

The water flows on to the next room, as it would have. It would have flown from where it was hottest (above the heating system) to the cooler room (Frigidarium).

What was that ingenious heating system, you ask? It was called the hypocaust and looked like this. These little block towers were under the floor of the bathhouse. Down here would be a furnace, of sorts, and it would heat the area between these little towers which would in turn heat the floor and water of the hot room (Caldarium) of the bathhouse. There was a ventilation system which allowed the smoke to escape harmlessly.

Here's a view of the outside bath--bright and beautiful. You can see the two levels--the bottom one with the water and the room around it which would have held all manner of activities and access to the other rooms, and the top level which holds statues of emperors and a beautiful vista. Some of the emperors featured were Hadrian, Trajan, and Julius Caesar.

One thing you might see on that lower level would be people offering to sell you something. (at the museum they have re-enactors--fun!) One of these might fix your sandals, or help you clean up, and so on.

What's a bathhouse without a changing room? Nearby would have been cubbies to keep one's stuff in, and the wealthy would have a slave to guard their stuff lest it be stolen while they bathe.

So say you wanted to relax in the sauna--here is the bench you would sit on.

Here is a fragment of the roof. Why is it hollow, you ask? Well if it must be held up and supported, it should be light. Of course the Romans thought of that!

These coins of Nero help us understand when the town was settled.

And these bones help us understand what kinds of animals were in the area and (maybe) their purpose or their way of death.

These keys are fairly big and definitely of different shapes. We can only imagine what sorts of secrets they protected!

This note was found in the bathing complex. It's especially interesting because it uses Latin letters to write words in British Celtic. It's the only example of the language we have.

These are some tools found at the baths. They don't look that different, right?

Following is some art found in the baths. There were all sorts of themes--mainly mythological and hunting-related.