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Today we went to the lovely city of Bath. I was expecting another little quaint village, but Bath is actually quite large. But because of the old buildings and narrow streets, it still retains a measure of quaintness that no city its size in the US can match.
Bath has wonderful shopping and residential areas as well as the beautiful River Avon, but what really makes it special is the Roman bath that is there.
Normally, I don't get too excited over baths; ones I have seen in the past have tended to just be an oblong of old crumbling stone with an area that the plaque tells you was once a changing area and plunge pool, but just looks like a wall that fell over, but these baths today were really amazing.
To begin with, the complex was started in the 1st Century AD, which I have trouble wrapping my head around, and it is enormous. Even today, the excavation is not complete, and they think the bathing complex continues on even further under the street.
Bath has wonderful shopping and residential areas as well as the beautiful River Avon, but what really makes it special is the Roman bath that is there.
Normally, I don't get too excited over baths; ones I have seen in the past have tended to just be an oblong of old crumbling stone with an area that the plaque tells you was once a changing area and plunge pool, but just looks like a wall that fell over, but these baths today were really amazing.
To begin with, the complex was started in the 1st Century AD, which I have trouble wrapping my head around, and it is enormous. Even today, the excavation is not complete, and they think the bathing complex continues on even further under the street.
One of the most wonderful fun facts given to us by the audio tour was that the water that is naturally bubbling up from the earth into these baths is believed to be rainwater from 10,000 years ago. Wrap your head around that.
Like so many places, this roman bath was built over completely and had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. In the 1800's there was actually a residence on top of the baths, and the residents of it kept having trouble with water leaking up through their basement. When they investigated the source of this troublesome water, it was discovered that the house, and in fact most of the area around it was built on top of this major bathing complex.
The initial impetus for the building of this massive complex was the discovery in the 1st Century AD of this magical spring of water bubbling up, hot from the ground. Believing this was a source directly from the goddess, they erected this amazing spa around it.
No one was allowed to bathe directly in the bubbling pool, but it fed other pools which people could bathe in. This spa contained changing areas, massage rooms, cold and tepid plunge pools, a pool with benches inside it so that people could sit up to their necks in water, a room that was essentially a sauna, a temple, and the main bath, where presumably business was conducted by naked bathers.
I know they had their issues, but those Romans, my goodness they were innovative. They tempered iron and created pipes to direct the flow of water into the different chambers; they created pulleys that made the weight of what was being pulled feel significantly less; they created some system of piping air into one of the pools so that they essentially had a whirlpool; they stacked layers of tiles in different rows and then laid a floor on top of it so that the warmth from the furnace (they created a system of furnaces within the stones) flowed through the spaces between these tile stacks and heated the floor so much that the room essentially became a sauna; they used large round stones with holes in them to vent steam; and they developed a pump room to deliver water to different chambers.
It really was astonishing, as was their belief in the power of this hot water of the goddess to heal and protect. They were unbelievably ahead of their time. This recent movement we have been having to incorporate massage and other more "alternative" therapies into our lives, the Romans already understood. They believed that things like massage, hot water, sweating, cleansing and relaxation were an important and in fact pivotal part of life, one that was spiritual as well as physical.
Of course, they also liked to sacrifice living things in their temples, so I don't want to idealize them too much.
The initial impetus for the building of this massive complex was the discovery in the 1st Century AD of this magical spring of water bubbling up, hot from the ground. Believing this was a source directly from the goddess, they erected this amazing spa around it.
No one was allowed to bathe directly in the bubbling pool, but it fed other pools which people could bathe in. This spa contained changing areas, massage rooms, cold and tepid plunge pools, a pool with benches inside it so that people could sit up to their necks in water, a room that was essentially a sauna, a temple, and the main bath, where presumably business was conducted by naked bathers.
I know they had their issues, but those Romans, my goodness they were innovative. They tempered iron and created pipes to direct the flow of water into the different chambers; they created pulleys that made the weight of what was being pulled feel significantly less; they created some system of piping air into one of the pools so that they essentially had a whirlpool; they stacked layers of tiles in different rows and then laid a floor on top of it so that the warmth from the furnace (they created a system of furnaces within the stones) flowed through the spaces between these tile stacks and heated the floor so much that the room essentially became a sauna; they used large round stones with holes in them to vent steam; and they developed a pump room to deliver water to different chambers.
It really was astonishing, as was their belief in the power of this hot water of the goddess to heal and protect. They were unbelievably ahead of their time. This recent movement we have been having to incorporate massage and other more "alternative" therapies into our lives, the Romans already understood. They believed that things like massage, hot water, sweating, cleansing and relaxation were an important and in fact pivotal part of life, one that was spiritual as well as physical.
Of course, they also liked to sacrifice living things in their temples, so I don't want to idealize them too much.
One final thing I loved about the baths was that in one of the pools, the excavators found all of these small rolls of tin that had writing on them. It turned out that these rolls contained curses that people had scratched into the tin with a knife and then thrown into the pool for the goddess, believing that she would enact them.
What was so wonderful about these curses was not only the literal translations, but also the grievances they were asking her to avenge. My favorite curse, literally translated, said something like: "Caesar stole my gloves. All death on him and blood from his eyes melting to his face and head falling underfoot for this." Good stuff.
If you are ever in Bath, these ruins are well worth a visit. And if you are plagued with persistent flooding in your basement, don't ignore it. Who knows what's under there....
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