I want to turn to an extremely important building. And one that I am going to come back to on a number of occasions during this semester. So put an asterisk next to this one as a, a particularly important building, and one that is almost certain I'll find some way of incorporating into the first midterm. Because I think it's so significant, and it will, it will turn up again and again and again, in the course of the term, especially when we talk about later bath architecture. It is a Stabian Baths of Pompeii. It dates to the second half of the second century B.C., and it was remodeled in the first half of the first century B.C.. The Stabian Baths are one of several bath buildings that Pompeii, I mentioned in the introductory lecture that these, these houses in Pompeii did not have running water. And so access to bathing and to water for daily use was obviously critical, and the bath served that purpose the place where one could go and bathe. But they were also, they also became great social centers, great places where you really wanted to go and hang out with your friends, while you were sitting in the sauna. And and so they take on a very, they are a very important piece of life in cities like Pompeii. The Stabian Baths, as their date indicate are very early. They begun already under the Samnites, and they have some extremely interesting features. And once again, I'm going to have to go over some of the bath terminology. You can see here that if you walk along the street you just see a series of cubicles which served as shops, so fairly unprepossessing. But there is an entrance way through those shops into a very large open space surrounded by columns on three sides, that is called the palaestra of the baths. The palaestra was the exercise courts, where you jogged and, and, you know, and ran around and so on, and after you exerted yourself and got all sweaty, you could jump into the pool, that was located over here. This was not a place to do laps, it was pretty much a soaking pool, a pool where you could cool off. But the technical term for that is either a piscina, which is what's on the monument list for you, or a natatio, n-a-t-a-t-i-o. A little pool where you could slash yourself after exerting yourself by exercising in the palaestra. The build at the bath block itself, the bathing room themselves, are located on the other side of the plan, on the right side, as you see it here. The northern side actually of the plan and we see two sets of spaces. This set of four down here, this one, this one, this one and this one. And then the set of a comparable number of rooms up there. These early Roman baths there was a separation between the men's section of the baths, and the women's section of the baths. And I'm sorry ladies but, we'll have to accept the fact that at least in ancient Pompeii, the women's section was quite nondescript. It was much smaller than the men's, at least they had one, thank goodness. But it was smaller than the men's, and the rooms had no architectural distinction whatsoever. All of the designer's effort went into creating a wonderful set of rooms for the men. We see the men's rooms again over here, these four, and the women's at the top. Consequently, the only ones that have any merit, architecturally, in my showing you today, are the ones for the men's baths down here. The four rooms, the four key rooms to both the men's and women's sections were the apodyterium, and again these words are on the monument list for you. The apodyterium, which was the dressing room. It's a fairly, again it's large, but a fairly non-descript rectangular room here, you can see it right down here. And the way it was designed, was that you went in, and there were no lockers, no private lockers but there were benches where you could, when you got undressed you can just take your clothes and put them in a little pile, on that bench. You had to just take on faith that no one was going to steal any of your belongings. And if you were very well-to-do, some of the very well-to-do Romans, men and women, brought slaves with them, their slave, their private slave to watch their stuff, while they were in the sauna with their friends. From the apodyterium, you go into the so-called tepidarium of the baths, also usually a plain rectangular room, even in the men's section, which served as the warm room, where you started to warm yourself up. You went from the tepidarium into the caldarium of the bath, which was the a hot room, the where you really, it was the sauna essentially of the bath. And consequentially there was, a, a basin over here with cold water, so if you got too hot, you could go and splash yourself with that cold water. So apodyterium, tepidarium, caldarium. By then you're really heated up, and you can make your way back into this room over here, which is called the frigidarium, or the cold room. The frigidarium was a place that you could really cool off. And I think you can see by looking at these the two most important rooms architecturally, you can see this even in plan. Are the caldarium which has a, an apse or curved element at the end, and this room in particular, the frigidarium, because it is a round structure with radiating alcoves and we are going to see that it's domed. This is a particularly again star, star, star, star. One of the most important rooms that I have shown you, probably the most important room I have you shown you thus far this semester, in that it is going to have a very long future architecturally. What you see here basically ends up as the Pantheon someday. This round space, round structure with radiating alcoves, and as we'll see, a dome, and not only a dome, but a hole in the ceiling, an oculus, that allows light into the structure. How were these baths, heated, how were the hot rooms heated? Through a system called a hypocaust again I've put the mon-, I put the word on the monument list for you. A hypocaust, H-Y-P, H-Y-P-O-C-A-U-S-T. What was a hypocaust system? A hypocaust system was a system by which they put terracotta terracotta tubes in the floor and behind the walls. They blew hot air into those, and they also raised up the pavement of the floor, on a series of stacked tiles, and you can see that extremely well. It's a very well preserved hypocaust from the Stabian Baths, placed these tiles on stacks, stacks of tiles, let, leaving space in between them, and put braziers between those, tin, tin you know, metal braziers metal bowls that held hot coals and so on. And that, from those hot coals, obviously it's slaves who have to, you know, keep those coals hot. But coals that were placed in these pans that that helped also to heat the pavement that was located above. The, this very important room, the frigidarium of the Stabian Baths, you see it here as it looks today, a small, round space. It has a, it would have had a pool in the center, a round pool, radiating alcoves, a dome, a dome, that is open to the sky, with an oculus that allows light into it. You can see the remains of paint, stucco, and then paint, blue and red, paint, probably some kind of marine scene included here. But this, I can't under, underscore enough the importance of this particular room and the future that this design has for Roman architecture. I'd like to show you another bath at Pompeii, the so-called Forum Baths. The Forum Baths are interesting because they're later. They date too, as you can see from your monument list, to 80 B.C., so this is what the Romans did when they came in and took over Pompeii, and were making it into one of those mini-Romes. Those cities in the, in the, in the in the model of Rome. And you can see it is very, very similar to what was going on in the Stabian Baths, in the earlier Samnite baths with the same palaestra, we see a palaestra up at 2, the exercise court. We don't seem to have an natatio in this particular plan. We see the men's section over here at 3, 4, 5 and 6, and the women's section over here, 7, 8, 9, 10. Again, the women's section off to the side, of no arch, architectural distinction whatsoever. The men's over here, and you could enter the men's either through the palaestra or from an opening over here at 1. We see the same set of rooms that we saw at the Stabian Baths. We see the apodyterium or dressing, undressing and dressing room over here at 3. The tepidarium at 5, the caldarium at 6, and the caldarium at 6 is of the same shape as the caldarium in the Stabian Baths, a rectangular room with an apse at the end and a, basin for cold water splashes. And then you go back again to the frigidarium, and you can see the frigidarium in the baths, Forum Baths of Pompeii. The same shape as that in the Stabian Baths at Pompeii, a round, a small round room with radiating alcoves. I can show you views both of the tepidarium of the Forum Baths, extremely well preserved, as you can see here. You can also see they've used a great barrel vault for this room. It isn't as large as it looks here, but it's a sizable room. And this is a very good place to show you by the way, to give you a sense of how these things were decorated. How so many of rooms, Roman buildings today, Roman buildings today are stripped of their original decoration. But that decoration was often quite beautiful and ostentatious, and we can see here a, we can get here a sense of that. You can see the wall has been stuccoed over, and then also in stucco these great, flowering acanthus plants and creatures flying above, animals, human feature, Gods and Goddesses flying above. Paint was, you know, they use paint as well, red and blue and white and other colors, to accentuate the design. This gives you some sense of the flavor of these. And then this wonderful detail below of these Atlas figures who are shown holding up, the vault of this particular room. It gives you some sense of why Romans flocked to these places. Not only because it was the only place they could bathe themselves, but also because it was just a wonderful place to be in, and to enjoy again the company of friends. This is a view of what room. In the Forum Baths? The caldarium, excellent Neal. The caldarium ah,over here, with its rectangular shape, and then its apse and its cold water basin for cold water splashes. And then look at the ceiling, how wonderful. In that, in that, apse you see a semi-dome a, a round hole, or an oculus in that semi-dome, to allow light into it. So here we see them exploring oculi and semi-domes, as well as in domes. And then the square and rectangular spaces, holes in the ceiling. Openings in the ceilings that have been placed there also to allow light into the system, so that you could use the room, but also to create the kind of wonderful light effects that it does, when you have rays of sunshine coming in on you while you are in your sauna. This is couple of more views of, this is couple of views of the frigidarium of the Forum Baths. You can see the dome up above, the oculus in that dome. You can see some of the stucco decoration still preserved. You can see the alcoves here, the radiating alcoves, and some of the stucco decoration here. Sea creatures against a red background. And this is a restored view of what the frigidarium would have looked like with the pool in the center; a nice place to relax. The radiating apses over here, and then the dome with the oculus and with the light streaming in. Again, I can't underscore enough the importance of both of these frigidaria, for the future of Roman architecture. The other importance of the Forum Baths is the Forum Baths is today where you can eat and if your there for the full day, as I recommend you be, you're going to want to eat at some point. And there is a cafeteria, which doesn't look like much, but actually the food is not bad. The Italians have a very hard time making bad pasta. So you can always get some good pasta at the snack bar, and you will want to make your way, there's a few views of it, make your way to the Forum Baths, if you're there for any length of time.
