Writings: Roman Baths

Awesome. They give you a little thingee that you hang around your neck and gives you an ongoing dialogue about what you are seeing. Each display has a number, and you typr in that number, and you get the history of that display. There is even a special one for children, which apparently is great and keeps the kids interested.

What to say about the baths. So much information.

As you come in, you can see Bath Cathedral overlooking the Baths.

And the statues along the walkway. Many of the important Romans have been sculpted and watch over the baths. They are quite recent in comparison, late 1800s.

Looking down from the terrace you can see some displays that depict what would be happening at the time

And an entrance to the baths and niches where people would sit and enjoy themselves. A bit like our swimming pools today.

The water is steaming hot, and I tried to get a photo of the steam coming off the bath, and the bubbles as it boiled. I'm not sure how well I succeeded. Will have to wait until I can see the photos on a bigger screen. This I gather is the main bath, and it all flows from one into another and as it goes becomes cooler so it was suitable for people to bathe in.

This is the best picture I could take of the way the underground water flows from one bath to another.

The water looks really murky and yukky. They were apparently using the baths up until about the 1970s until someone got sick with meningitis. There are signs all around about not swimming in the baths. Talked to one of the tour guides and he was saying that if you fall in accidentally they will offer you a place to dry out and to dry your clothes and help you medically if you get sick, but if you jump in on purpose, you are on your own. I wonder how many people fall in accidentally on purpose.

There's a whole museum part as well that talks about the original religious aspect for the baths. One of the things they talk about was that people would send curses to other people. If you threw the curse into the water and it floated back up again, then you would be cursed rather than the person you were aiming it at. So they used to write the curses on metal and throw them in. I wonder how many feet were cut over the years on rusting metal!!

Apparently there was a whole process people went through when they went into the bath, from a changing room, where the temperature was warm, through to a room where they oiled themselves up, and then into a “sauna” room. Not sure where they went from there.