One of the Structures at the Barbarathermen
The Barbarathermen or Barbara Baths is ancient Roman public bath in the city of Trier. This was built to supplement the main public bath at the forum. Access to the ruins of the public bath is free, though there is a system of walkways to allow visitors to go through the ruins without causing any damage to the monument. The baths aren’t very extensive relatively speaking but at least it gives visitors an idea of how large it was and how it works. There are also informational signs which describe to the visitor what exactly they are seeing. You will know that the ancient Romans care for their hygiene as much as we do.
Open Air Museum at Barbarathermen
The baths are surprisingly very systematic. There will be a place to undress, followed by a room for a cold water bath, then if they so wish, they can continue to a not so cold room in preparation for bathing in the warm baths. This is followed by the actual warm baths. The water is heated before it is fed into the baths. This is a great system considering that electricity was not discovered at the time and people would actually need to heat water to get hot water. By having public baths, this centralizes all this and at the same time provides the citizens with this service for those who are not rich enough to have this in their homes. Looking at the ruins of the Barbarathermen, it is hard to know what these places are. The signs helped immensely at explaining what I was seeing and giving me a better appreciation of the genius of the ancient Romans.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/Barbarathermen.kmz} zoom=19]