Terme romane di Santa Venera al Pozzo

The Roman baths at Santa Venera al Pozzo are a study in layered stone and purpose. What remains is not a single building but a palimpsest of three construction phases, each one adding rooms and functions to a complex designed for the ancient ritual of bathing. The two barrel-vaulted chambers belong to the second phase, along with six eastern rooms now reduced to their perimeter walls. A later addition brought a third chamber with a praefurnium, the furnace that heated the floors and walls, though only its low foundation walls survive, standing between 0.4 and 1.2 metres above ground. Against the south-west wall of one room, the shoulders of a large oven can be seen; near the south-east corner, a small staircase of three steps in lava stone and brick suggests a former connection between spaces. A basalt threshold, 1.2 metres wide and still bearing hinge holes, marks the northern entrance. Traces of a rectangular brick floor survive in the north-east corner, while along the interior walls run the low supports for suspensurae, the raised floors that allowed hot air to circulate beneath, a hallmark of Roman thermal engineering.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.