Discovery of a thermal complex in a villa in Pompeii

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Pompeii is the second most visited tourist site in Italy, after the Colosseum in Rome.

Pompeii archaeologists have unearthed a private thermal complex where guests bathed before sitting down to sumptuous feasts, a press release from the Italian site indicated on Friday, January 17.

The baths unearthed in a Roman villa constitute “one of the largest private thermal complexes” discovered so far in the ancient city, near Naples, which was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago.

Visitors took off their clothes in a locker room that could accommodate up to 30 people, judging from the benches present, according to the press release. They then relaxed in the “calidarium”, a room with a hot bath, then in the “tepidarium”, a warm room, and finally dove into a pool of cold water in the “frigidarium”. The cold room in particular is “very impressive”with “a courtyard with a portico of 10 meters on each side, in the center of which is a large swimming pool”according to the same source.

Afterwards, guests dined by candlelight in a black-walled banquet hall, decorated with scenes from Greek mythology. The room and thermal complex are part of a large villa that archaeologists have been working on for two years. “The direct passage from the thermal spaces to the large convivial room suggests that the Roman villa was suitable for organizing sumptuous banquets”continues the press release. It was about “valuable opportunities for the owner to ensure the electoral consensus of his guests, to promote the candidacy of friends or relatives, or simply to assert his social status”.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the ash and rocks that fell helped preserve many of Pompeii's buildings almost in their original state, while forming sinister shapes around the corpses victims of the disaster. The total number of deaths is not known, but the Pompeii website states that “the remains of more than 1,000 victims were found during excavations”.

Pompeii is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the second most visited tourist site in Italy, after the Colosseum in Rome.