Luxurious private bathrooms found in Pompeii villas – History

One of the largest baths ever found in a private house in Pompeii was unearthed at Insula 10 in the Regio IX neighborhood. Few families in Pompeii had enough money to own their own private baths, and only three villas had bathing complexes of comparable size and sophistication. A unique feature of the building is the direct connection between the thermal space and the Trilinium (banquet hall). This shows that the owner provides the dinner guests with a complete spa experience and a sumptuous dinner.

The baths consisted of a calidarium (hot room), tepidarium (warm room), frigidarium (cold room) and an apododyterium (changing room) with benches along the walls. The benches were large enough to accommodate up to thirty people, far more than the homeowner and his family. The walls were painted vivid black and red, and the floors were inlaid with marble imported from across the Roman Empire. The Refrigerator is also a majestic room, with a colonnade (a courtyard enclosed by a portico supported by columns) painted a bright red. The space is 32 x 32 feet with a large rectangular pool in the center and can accommodate 20-30 people. The walls are painted with murals of athletes playing sports, creating the cultural atmosphere of a Greek gymnasium.

The palace has been excavated for two years. Last year, a large banquet hall with elaborate frescoes was discovered, as well as a sanctuary with exquisite frescoes against a sky-blue background. Archaeologists believe that this spectacular residence belonged to the famous local politician Aulus Rustius Verus, who would have a long list of visitors to his home for public and private matters: Clients (not like the ones he worked for, but rather, hosted them for meals in his huge dining room and a spa experience that displayed and lubed his generosity and wealth. The benevolence of the Roman system and supporting gear.

Banquet guests will start in the dressing rooms and then move to the hot room, where a fiery heating system directs hot air under the floor and through the walls, creating a sauna-like environment. Next comes a warm room where bathers can enjoy a massage and thorough cleansing, first applying oil and then scraping it off with metal scrapers (curved scraping tools) of various sizes. The cold shower concludes the spa experience, with a soak in cold water to close the pores.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, enslaved workers stoked furnaces and provided heat for rooms and water. The boiler room was located on the other side of the heat chamber, and its machinery has survived. A pipe carrying water from the street was connected to a boiler with a water pipe leading to a cold water pool, and hot water from the boiler was piped to the hot water chamber. The pipes, boilers and valves that control the flow of water in and out look so primitive that at first glance they could be mistaken for modern utility infrastructure.

Excavation of the bathing space required innovative methods that allowed archaeologists to reach the floor without being forced to remove the colonnade columns. Due to being buried by a volcano 2,000 years ago, the colonnade was structurally unstable, so the team erected a temporary support structure so that all columns and walls would remain in place while the colonnade was excavated. A temporary support grid will remain in place to protect the beam system (horizontal beams supported by columns) until the structure is restored and can stand on its own.