Roman baths are designed for bathing and relaxing, which is also the same feature of the whole Roman imperial city. Bathrooms include rooms with different temperatures, as well as swimming pools and places for reading, relaxing and socializing. Roman baths have spacious coverage space, which is an important driving force for architectural innovation, especially in the use of domes.

Pillar of Roman culture

Public baths are a major feature of ancient Greek towns, but they are usually limited to a series of hip baths. The Romans expanded this idea by combining facilities and bathrooms, which are also common in small towns in the Roman world. They are usually located near the square. In addition to public baths, the rich often build their own private baths as part of villas, and even build baths for the legions of Roman troops during the campaign. However, these baths (balnea or thermae) in big cities have huge colonnades and wide arches and domes. The bathroom is made of millions of refractory Songkhla bricks. The finished buildings are usually gorgeous, with exquisite mosaic floors, marble-covered walls and decorative statues.

It is usually open at lunchtime until dusk, and everyone can use the bathroom.

It is usually open at lunchtime until dusk. Everyone, rich or poor, can use the bathroom. For example, during the reign of Diocletian, the admission fee was a copper coin, and there were only two silver coins-the smallest denomination. Sometimes, on public holidays and other occasions, the bathroom can even be entered for free.

Typical elements of Roman baths

Typical features (listed in the order that swimmers may experience) are:

Aseptic dressing room

Stadium-fitness center

Swimming-outdoor swimming pool.

Laconi ca and Suda toria- overheated dry and wet steaming rooms.

Calidarium- heating chamber, heated by hot water pool and independent basin (lip) on the bracket.

Warm room, indirect heating and warm water swimming pool.

Cold room-a cool room without heating and cold water bath, usually large and round, is the core of the bath.

* * * room and other clinics.

Other facilities may include a small cold-water swimming pool, private bathroom, toilet, library, lecture hall, fountain and outdoor garden.

boiler system

The first bathing beach seems to lack a high degree of planning and is often an ugly combination of various structures. However, by the 1 century, the bathing place has become a beautiful, symmetrical and harmonious structure, usually set in gardens and parks. Early bathrooms used natural hot springs or braziers for heating, but since BC 1 century, more complex heating systems have been used, such as floor heating with wood-burning stoves as fuel. This is not a new idea, because the Greek baths also adopted such a system, but just like the Romans, they adopted an idea and improved it to achieve the highest efficiency. A huge flame from the furnace sends warm air (pilae) under the suspended floor on narrow columns, solid stones, hollow cylinders or polygonal or circular bricks. The floor is paved with 60 cm square tiles (feet) and then decorated with mosaics.

It is also possible to heat the wall by inserting hollow rectangular tubes (tubular tubes), which carry hot air provided by the furnace. In addition, a special kind of brick (tegulae mammatae) has a boss in one corner, which can capture hot air, increase heat insulation and prevent heat loss. Since 1 century, the use of glass in windows can also better regulate the temperature and allow the sun to increase its own heat for the room.

A large amount of water required by large-scale bathing beaches is provided by specially-built aqueducts and regulated by huge reservoirs in bathing beaches. For example, Diocletian's bath in Rome can hold 20,000 cubic meters of water. Water is heated in a large lead pot installed on the stove. You can use a bronze turtle connected to the boiler to add water to the hot pool (through a lead pipe). Once released into the swimming pool, the hot water will circulate by convection.

Outstanding example

Some famous and splendid baths include Lepcis Magna (completed in about AD 127) and its well-preserved dome, Diocletian Bath in Rome (completed in about AD 305), Tingard Bath in Evsos, Antony Bath in Bath (in the 2nd century AD) and Carthage (in about AD 162).

Caracara Bath in southern Rome is probably the best preserved bath in Rome, and its scale is second only to Trajan (about AD 1 10). They are also the most luxurious Roman baths ever built. Completed in about 235 AD, huge walls and arches are still standing, which proves the grand scale of the complex, which uses about 6.9 million bricks and has 252 internal columns. With a height of 30 meters and an area of 337 x 328 meters, they combine all the classic elements that people expect, including an Olympic-scale swimming pool with a depth of one meter and an unusual circular heater, which is as high as the Pantheon in Rome and spans 36 meters ... The high-temperature bathroom also has large glass windows to use the heat of the sun. Other facilities include two libraries, a waterwheel and even a waterfall.

The complex has four entrances and can accommodate up to 8,000 tourists every day. 6300m？ Marble and granite are arranged on the wall, the ceiling is decorated with glass mosaic, reflecting the light of the swimming pool into rainbow effect, there are a pair of 6 m long fountains, and a promenade terrace is provided on the second floor. Water is supplied by aqueducts of Aquanova Antoniana and aqua Marcia and local springs, and stored in 18 reservoir. The bath is heated by 50 stoves and burns 10 tons of wood every day. In addition to the majestic broken walls, many rooms in the site still retain the original marble mosaic floor, and large pieces of the upper floor also survive, depicting the scenes of fish scales and mythical marine life.

Impact on architecture

The need of bathroom and creating a large ventilated room with high ceiling led to the development of architectural dome. The earliest existing dome Romanesque building is the Stabian bathroom in Pompeii, which can be traced back to the 2nd century BC. The concrete developed in the form of hard mortar gravel makes the spacing between unsupported walls wider and wider, as does the use of hollow brick bucket vault and iron tie rod supported by arch arch arch. These characteristics will be widely used in other public buildings, especially large buildings such as cathedrals. Even in modern times, Roman baths continue to influence designers. For example, the Chicago Railway Station and the Pennsylvania Station in new york perfectly duplicate the buildings of the large cold storage in Caracalla Bath.