The glorious baths of Caracalla are now ruins.

Entrance

Welcome to the Baths of Caracalla, one of the most elegant and massive Roman baths ever built. As late as the fifth century A.D., over 200 years after it was built, it still was ranked as one of Rome's seven wonders.

If you were a Roman, you would know that the public baths were as much a way of life as they were a place to wash. By the early fifth century A.D., there were almost 900 baths in Rome alone. The typical bath had a mosaic of uses and served as a community center, restaurant, fitness center, bar, and also as a performance center, where a juggler, a musician, or even a philosopher might entertain.

The most likely time you would have visited is in the afternoon, as the Roman workday for most ended by noon. If that time wasn't convenient, you could bathe in the morning or evening, when some baths were lit by torch. The Baths of Caracalla covered 27 acres and could accommodate 1,600 people at a time, so you would have had plenty of company. All would come: infants and elderly, men and women, healthy and ill, freemen and slaves, all of whom often bathed naked and together. If you were there at the right time, you might even share a bath with the emperor himself.

At your service (if you had the money), would be masseurs and food vendors, bartenders and slaves, poets and musicians. The baths were a bustling place, and one man who roomed above one wrote a letter chronicling its noise, complaining of the "grunt" of a weight lifter, a masseur's "pummeling of a shoulder," the occasional "arresting of a pickpocket," and the "racket of a man who likes to hear his own voice."

But his complaints were drowned out by most Romans, who were devotees of the baths. Roman affection for them was typified by the remark one Roman emperor made to a foreigner who asked why the emperor took the trouble to bathe once a day. "Because I do not have the time to bathe twice a day," he replied

Garrett Fagan says that toilets were less private in Roman times.

Toilets

It is most likely that you would have felt uncomfortable going to the bathroom at Caracalla—or any other Roman bath, for that matter.

Romans were far less shy about bodily functions than we are. In general, the Roman Empire was a much more communal world than ours. Acts we consider private—bathing and going to the toilet—were done by the Romans in public and without shame.

The seats of the toilets at Roman baths are close together. And there is little historical evidence that men and women had separate bathroom (or bathing) facilities. Some modicum of privacy was provided by the Roman's loose togas, since they were hiked up rather than pulled down.

"However," points out Garrett Fagan, an authority on life in the Roman baths, "that doesn't preclude the kinds of noises and odors that would disgust us. For modern-day Westerners, it would be a very embarrassing place to be, but the Romans didn't seem to mind."

Romans would wipe themselves using sponges on sticks. Before they left, they'd stop at a basin to wash their hands. The sewers passing underneath the baths—the last stop of water from the aqueducts—would wash their waste to the river.

Romans would change in the apodyterium before entering the baths.

Apodyterium

This is the changing room, your entry into the baths. An apodyterium had cubicles or shelves where you could tuck away your clothing and other belongings while you bathed. Leaving belongings behind unprotected was a risk, of course, for one of the most common visitors to the Roman baths apparently was thieves.

Privately owned slaves, or one hired at the baths, called a capsarius, would watch your belongings while you enjoyed the pleasures of the baths. One Roman schoolbook quotes a wealthy young Roman schoolboy who entered the baths, leaving his slave behind in the apodyterium. Master reminded slave: "Do not fall asleep, on account of the thieves."

If you were wealthy, you might even bring more than one slave along, as parading your slaves at the baths was a way to show your elevated social status.

Slaves washed their masters and mistresses at the baths.

If you were a wealthy free man or woman, slaves carried your bathing paraphernalia: exercise and bathing garments, sandals, linen towels, and a toilet kit that consisted of anointing oils, perfume, a sponge, and strigils, curved metal instruments used to scrape oil, sweat, and dirt from the body. Slaves might also wash you or give you a massage.

If you were robbed, you could respond by appealing to one of the Roman gods for retribution. A curse on the wrongdoer was written on tablets and offered up to the gods, who were asked to intervene.

Many of these curse tablets were found at the spring at Bath, England. One of them reads: "Solinus to the Goddess Sulis Minerva. I give to your divinity and majesty [my] bathing tunic and cloak. Do not allow sleep or health to him who has done me wrong, whether man or woman, whether slave or free, unless he reveals himself and brings goods to your temple."

Romans strigiled away oil, dirt, and sweat.

Tepidarium

After changing in the apodyterium and working up a sweat in the palaestra, you would step into the tepidarium. This was the first stop on the way to the hot caldarium and then the cool-watered frigidarium.

The tepidarium was the place where "strigiling" often took place, the Roman habit of using curved metal tools to wipe oil, and with it sweat and dirt. Instead of using soap, Roman bathers would cover their bodies with oil to loosen dirt and then wipe off the mixture with various strigil devices. This might have been done by your own slave, if you had one, or by one who worked at the baths, if you could afford one.

Depilation was never fun.

You could receive a massage here. That was definitely less painful than a depilation, which consisted of having your body hairs plucked out, as hairless bodies were fashionable during much of the Roman Empire. One man who lived above the baths complained of the "hair-plucker with his penetrating shrill voice—for purposes of advertisement—continually giving it vent and never holding his tongue except when he is plucking the armpits and making his victim yell."

The often-gloomy Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius could have been describing a tepidarium when he said: "What is bathing when you think about it—oil, sweat, filth, greasy water, everything loathsome."

The hypocaust system heated bath water and air.

Caldarium

This was the hottest room in a Roman bath. At the Baths of Caracalla, the room was 115 feet wide and crowned with a concrete dome.

The hot water and steamy air were designed to open your pores, and water and air temperatures may have risen well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with a sticky 100 percent humidity to exaggerate the effect. At the Baths of Caracalla, the caldarium consisted of a large hall that contained a large pool a little over three feet deep. If you had slaves attending you, they might use a pouring dish called a patara to refresh you with cool water.

This room and its waters, like the tepidarium, were heated by the hypocaust, the system's furnace. The hypocaust, below ground and stoked by slaves, heated a tank of water transported by pipe to the appropriate pool.

The furnace heated the air drawn underneath the floor of the caldarium to heat its tiles. You would have probably worn sandals or wooden clogs so as not to scorch your feet. Hot air then rose up through hollowed-out bricks that lined the walls before exiting through chimneys.

Romans cooled off in the frigidarium.

Frigidarium

You have already taken a warm bath in the tepidarium and a hot one in the caldarium, and may even have stopped in other sauna-like rooms.

Now it's time to close all the skin pores that have been opened. You can do this by plunging into the frigidarium's cold waters. The dip is meant to refresh and is often the final bath of a visitor.

Entertainment

While the baths would have stimulated your body, they also could stimulate your mind.

A half-stadium at the baths probably served as a place Romans could sit and watch their favorite entertainment. Some Romans might have chosen to watch a display of juggling or gymnastics, or to listen to the sounds of jesters or musicians. Others might have attended a discourse by a philosopher or a poetry reading.

The midday Mediterranean sun might have been all you needed. Some rooms at the public baths had unglazed windows—the place to go if you wanted nothing more than to sunbathe your way to a tan.

Statuary was everywhere in the baths.

Art

If you were to take a walk through the Baths of Caracalla, you would come across dozens of statues, many of them perched proudly in wall niches. These statues were not the cold stone of antiquity we see in museums today, but brightly painted statues that were sometimes gilded.

It's hard to imagine how opulent these ruins, now crumbling brick and concrete, once were. Floors, wall panelings, and columns were carved from a rainbow assortment of colored marble imported from the far corners of the Empire. Paint and brightly colored stucco adorned bare stone and walls. Roofs and floors covered with glass mosaics glittered in the sunlight that passed through holes in domed chambers. Many of these magnificent materials were robbed from the baths to supply later public monuments, such as cathedrals.

The Baths of Caracalla were not alone in their splendor. Excavations of other public Roman baths have turned up similar evidence of opulence, and even small baths were adorned to please the eye as well as the body.

Eating was an essential part of taking a bath.

Food & Alcohol

Food and drink—including wine—would have been readily available to you when visiting the baths.

Vendors might have hawked their wares at the bath's entrance or in the shops around the bath's perimeter. The fare was usually light, as the prime time for bathing was in the afternoon, well before dinner, the Romans' main meal of the day. In the archeological exploration of the baths of Caerleon, for example, the drains were found filled with bits of glass plates, jugs, cup fragments, and even small pieces of animal bones that are presumed to be remnants of light snacks.

The poet Martial describes one man in the baths who ate eggs, lettuce, and fish at the baths. A price list near the lobby of the Suburban Baths in Herculaneum reads:

"Nuts-drinks—14

Hog's Fat—2

Bread—3

Cutlets for 3—12

Sausage for 4—8

51"

The number after each snack is probably the cost for each item, with the final "51" probably a combination price. The Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca complained about the noise all the vendors made: "Then there are the varied calls of the cake seller and the sausage man, and the confectioner and all the peddlers of snacks selling their commodities; each with their own characteristic intonation." The cries were probably much like the calls of merchants in a bustling market today.

Thirsty bathers also drank to replenish the bodily fluids lost by continually sweating and over-heating. Alcohol, including wine, also was available. Seneca and the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder both opposed drinking at the baths, and Martial complains about one sloppy bather who "doesn't know how to go home from the baths sober."