Baths of Caracalla |
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Since Agrippa commissioned the first public baths in Rome, they became a roman institution, expressing, together with the forum, a great attention for social life. In this kind of structure mingled extraordinary technical abilities and the passion for luxury: the Baths of Caracalla are a tangible example of this alliance. Actually, they are in a good state and this has made possible to study their plan: cold, warm and hot water pools (frigidarium, tepidarium and calidarium), reading rooms, shops, gyms, swimming pools and courtyards for outdoor physical training. We can deduce the various activities taking place in the baths thanks to a letter written by Seneca to Lucilius; Seneca lived close to the baths so he complains about the din made by the athletes practising weight lifting, swimming and games with the ball. He was vexed also by the shouts of the hucksters, those shrill and unjustified of the “hair rippers” and the more understandable shouts of pain of those who submitted to armpit depilation.
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They were inaugurated in 216 b.C. by Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Bassanius, also known as Caracalla, because of the Gallic hooded tunic he habitually wore, who completed what his father Septimius Severus had begun. The baths, fed by "Aqua Nova Antoniana" aqueduct, worked until the siege of the Goths under Witiges and then underwent the same fate of other roman architectonic structures: many of its parts were used to built new monuments. Eight capitals of the thermal library are now on the columns of Santa Maria in Trastevere, three capitals with eagles of a gym in the Dome of Pisa, the “Mosaico degli Atleti” (Athletes Mosaic) in the Vatican Museums and the “Toro” (Taurus) and the Farnese “Ercole” (Hercules) in the National Museum of Neaples.
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• Acient Appia
• Baths of Caracalla
• Imperial Fora
• The Roman Forum
• Acient Ostia
• Circus Maximus
• Roman Catacombs
• Catacombs of Priscilla
• Catacombs of San Callisto
• Catacombs of Villa Torlonia
• Catacombs of V. Randanini
• Catacombs of V. Ciamarra
• Catacombs of Domitilla
• Catacombs of Monteverde
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