Baths of Trajan

Public baths were an essential feature of a Roman town, as we have seen already at Pompeii. In the capital city with its large population, baths were frequent; thanks to the properties of

Figure 23.19 Trajan's Market (reconstruction), Rome

Concrete, they could also be large, with huge spaces covered by vaults. Emperors of the later empire, eager to demonstrate their generosity, often chose the bath complex as an appropriate way both to provide a public service and to express imperial grandeur.

The Baths of Trajan represent an important step in the monumentalization of the bath complex (Figure 23.20). The principles of public bathing had been established already in the Republic, with rooms of varying degrees of heat, and a cold water pool. Although following the design of earlier baths in the imperial capital, notably those of Titus, Trajan’s bath building measured three times the size of Titus’s, containing not only bathing facilities but also rooms for a variety of social and recreational purposes, such as lecture rooms, libraries, meeting rooms, and gardens. The layout would set the model for bath complexes of the next several centuries, such as the much better preserved baths of Caracalla (211—216) (Figure 23.21) and Diocletian (ca. 298-306).

Erected on the Oppius Hill (the south slope of the Esquiline), on a terrace atop the ruins of the Domus Aurea, the baths were the work of Apollodorus of Damascus. The bath building lies

Figure 23.20 Plan, Baths of Trajan, Rome

In the middle of a large platform, 250m x 210m. The east and west sides of the platform are lined with small rooms; in between, surrounding the main building on three sides, were gardens. The main rooms, entered from the north, lay on a north-south axis, with subsidiary rooms arranged symmetrically on either side. After entering, one reached first the swimming pool, surrounded by colonnades on three sides, with exedra on the south. To either side of the pool lay small rooms, uniform in size, and two rotundas with niches, possible frigidaria. Continuing beyond the pool, one came to a central hall (with, to the east and west, palaestras, or rectangular courtyards for exercising, with hemicycles attached), then bathing rooms and finally, in the southernmost position to catch the sun, the caldarium, with three vaulted bays supplied with rectangular niches and semicircular apses.