Colosseum is such an overwhelmingly monumental monument that few people pass by it and pay attention to other remains of the ancient Roman world that are located nearby. Today’s post will be devoted to one of them – modest, but extremely interesting ruins, which almost everyone passes by with complete indifference. You will find them on the north side of the square where the Colosseum stands. These are strange, evenly-spaced brick structures placed along the sidewalk at the foot of Oppio Hill.
First, a small digression. Well, the year 64 and the following years CE radically changed the appearance of Rome. Let us remember that in the year 64, during the reign of Nero, almost the entire city was consumed by a great fire. After it was extinguished, reconstruction began immediately and completely transformed Rome. However, the reconstruction did not last a year or even two. We know that initially the vast area of the former city centre was taken over by the Domus Aurea Neronis palace and park complex – including an artificial lake, the place of which is today occupied by the Colosseum, a huge vestibule (currently – the ruins of the temple of Venus and Roma), porticos, pavilions and many other buildings, among which wonderful gardens were created. However, the construction of Domus Aurea was never completed. The fall of Nero and the subsequent power struggles were not favourable times for rebuilding the city. Emperor Vespasian, who finally took power in 69 CE, decided to break definitively with Nero’s policy and “restored the areas occupied by the Domus Aurea to the people of Rome.” As we know, it was in such a context that the Colosseum was built on the site of Nero’s artificial pond – the emperor’s gift to the Roman people.
His father’s policy was continued by Vespasian’s son, Titus. He gave the people of Rome another building – new baths called the Baths of Titus. They occupied an area on the Oppio hill, on a natural terrace above the Colosseum, right next to the Domus Aurea Esquiline pavilion. Although it was a much smaller facility than the baths of Trajan, Caracalla, Diocletian or Constantine built in the following decades and centuries, it dazzled the Romans in the times of Titus. Why did Tytus build new thermal baths? It is not difficult to guess that it was again about the image of the emperor. After all, Nero founded wonderful thermal baths on the Campus Martius. The Romans then said, “What could be worse than Nero? What could be better than his baths?” Wanting to erase the memory of Nero, just like his father did, Titus had to fund baths that were at least as magnificent.
The new baths were accessed through a magnificent entrance located right next to the Colosseum. It was a kind of large, roofed vestibule open to the street in front of the Flavian Amphitheater through a row of high arcades. Next to the vestibule, there was a row of arcaded rooms, perhaps of a commercial or storage nature. A monumental staircase led upwards from the vestibule – first to the mezzanine, and then higher – to the terrace in front of the baths. The brick structures that we currently see at the foot of Oppio near the Colosseum are the ruins of part of the arcades adjacent to the lower vestibule of the baths. Unfortunately, I was unable to find information on whether it is part of the entrance itself preceding the staircase, or part of the side arcades, probably housing commercial rooms. Either way, they are unfortunately one of the few fragments of Titus’ baths that have survived to this day.
How do we know what Titus’s baths looked like? We are very lucky because their ruins were still clearly visible in the 16th century. The brilliant Italian architect Andrea Palladio prepared a plan which is today the most important source of our knowledge about them. This plan shows that, architecturally, these baths set the canon of similar buildings for the next quarter of a millennium! The public bathing facilities built by subsequent emperors were only larger and improved versions of Titus’ baths.
Finally, an interesting fact. Well, there is an interesting hypothesis, although unfortunately not widely supported in scientific circles, about the creation of Titus’ baths. Well, it has been pointed out that some features of Titus’ baths are somewhat suspicious. For example:
- They were located slightly diagonally from the Colosseum… When building his baths opposite his father’s work, the Colosseum, wouldn’t Titus have made sure that they were located exactly in front of the amphitheatre? However, the baths are almost perfectly aligned with Nero’s Domus Aurea Esquiline pavilion…
- The baths were relatively small. Even if we assume that the era of real bathhouses-behemoths was yet to come, their dimensions were not impressive compared to the previously built Baths of Agrippa and Nero on Campus Martius. When designing the baths next to the Colosseum, from which 50,000 spectators went out onto the street after each performance, shouldn’t Tytus have made a broader gesture and thought about a larger building?
- Also, the architectural innovation of the baths does not match Tytus, but more like his infamous predecessor…
These circumstances gave rise to the hypothesis that perhaps the baths in question were built by Nero as part of his palace. This would explain their small size and location, as well as the spectacular innovation that characterized many of Nero’s buildings. Perhaps Titus did not build the baths at all but gave them to the people of Rome to distance himself from the policies of the last disliked emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Or maybe he just finished the building started by Nero, but not yet put into use at the time of the emperor’s suicide? This hypothesis is fascinating, but unfortunately unverifiable.
And the second interesting fact: several dozen years later, right next to it, above the ruins of Nero’s Esquiline Pavilion, Trajan built even larger baths, which completely overshadowed the tiny Baths of Titus. But as fate would have it, when both facilities fell into ruin, no one remembered which baths were founded by which emperor. As a result, the Baths of Trajan were called the Baths of Titus. Therefore, when you search the Internet for information about the Baths of Titus, you will find many old engravings and plans that depict the Baths of Trajan…
