When we approached the entrance of The Roman Baths we thought there was an enormous queue to get into it, but as we got closer we realised that the queue was for something else, so we got in straight away. As I mentioned before it’s expensive, but the ticket price included the use of an audio guide which was informative. As we had travelled all the way from Scotland we decided that we couldn’t NOT go in.
Below is a photo of Bath Abbey which we didn’t go into, we had been in several churches and cathedrals within a few days so we gave this one a miss, however you do get a good view of it from within the Roman baths, exactly from where I took the photo above.
The photo below is of the hot springs bath, you can see the water bubbling, it’s naturally hot and that amazed the Romans, they decided it must be a sacred place which is why they built the whole complex there. In Georgian times the water level was higher, right up to where you can see the orange sort of tide mark. People used to sit on the stone blocks within the arches with their heads just out of the water. This was not for the faint hearted as the water was not at all clean after so many people using them, many of them with skin problems. It must have caused more problems than it ever cured!
It was crazily busy in the baths, especially in the interior parts. There’s a lot more to see than I had imagined. Below is a gilt bronze head of the godess Sulis Minerva which was discovered during excavations. She’s an amalgamation of the Celtic godess Sulis and Roman godess Minerva. The Romans liked to include parts of the local religions wherever they settled.
They’ve discovered lots of things which must have been lost in the baths over the centuries, including this lovely Celtic style brooch. Whoever lost it must have been really annoyed! You can read more about the history of the place here.
In places you can look down to what was the foundations of the baths.
Below is a big plunge pool with just a small amount of water in it but you can imagine people sitting around on the stone steps having a gossip, or maybe not, this was the Frigidarium, the cold pool.
There were various altars around the place and below is a reconstruction of one with just the corners showing the original Roman pieces. I imagine that they thought it was a good idea to be nice and clean if they were going to be praying to Minerva or anyone else.
Below is the remains of a horse sculpture.
And there are more figures of horses in what remains of the mosaic below.
We spent almost two hours there and by that time we were definitely ready for lunch before going on to the next places of interest in Bath. Although the entry price seemed steep it was worth it. The model below shows what the buildings would have looked like in their heyday. The baths were covered with arched roofs as you can see, it would have made it a lot cosier than being open to the elements as they are today. There were areas for massage and general pampering, all by slaves of course. For some reason the videos and photographs of pampering were all of scantily clad women!!
