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Un pò di storia: le terme nell'antica Roma .
Le terme romane trassero origine dalla fusione del ginnasio greco con il bagno a vapore egizio.
Il ginnasio greco era composto da una palestra, da un bagno e da un'esedra dove i filosofi dissertavano with their followers. Egypt, since the time of Ptolemy, reached the level of technical knowledge necessary to carry out such works, as shown by archaeological finds in the Nile Delta.
early as 200 BC the bathrooms (balneum) were much frequented by the Romans, but it was with the Baths of Agrippa (25 BC) that the Roman emperors competing to overcome their predecessors with spas increasingly grandiose: some were large enough to hold 6000 people.
Most spas included sports centers, swimming pools, parks, libraries, small theater to listen to poetry and music and a great room for parties, a city within a city. They were also restaurants and inns to sleep ... or spend a few hours in "nice" company. Each spa offering special attractions: a particular landscape, a magnificent library, a sports center high-level, although the main attraction were always swimming.
Among the best preserved are referred to the baths of Caracalla in Rome could hold more than 1500 people, the whole building was 337 meters x 328, and only the central 220 x 114 meters. In many places the remains of more than 30 meters high. And the Baths of Diocletian were much older ...
During the last period of the Christian empire was forbidden to go to the spa on Sunday or public holidays, while first were rarely closed. Sometimes men and women took baths together, but this practice varied from period to period and from area to area: in Pompeii for example, men and women took baths separately.
An afternoon at the spa
Roman citizens finished work early in the afternoon and went to the spa, which opened at noon, before the main meal.
A typical cycle begins with exercises at the gym, or sports in an external field, where he held the games even using small leather balls, and races in the struggle. Later, we went through three rooms to bathrooms, from the with the warmer water up to that with the warmer water. Entrance to the tepidarium , the larger room and luxurious spa: here we stayed an hour and anointed with oils. Then he went into calidarium . It was smaller rooms, usually built on the sides of the main bathroom. Finally we went to the laconicum , the final room warmer, heated with dry air at high temperature. After cleaning the body and massage, it was a swim in the pool of frigidarium . Then, refreshed and fragrant, was to go into other areas of the spa where you could read or participate in other activities or attending attractions.
great aqueduct, ruins of which remain high throughout the Roman world, fed the baths. The heat was evenly distributed cables through walls and floors superimposed hornet's nest, in which circulating hot air.
In late Christian times, perhaps due to the excessive cost of maintenance, perhaps because of the changing habits that tended to concentrate in the spa is not much of social life, the baths were gradually abandoned.
The destruction of the aqueducts by the barbarians broke then definitely use.
The rediscovery of the spa
A partire dal Mille, la rinascita europea contribuisce al ritorno della pratica del balneum. Così rifiorisce il bagno pubblico, che spesso è fornito di una stanza per il bagno di vapore, luogo di incontri non sempre innocenti. In molte città della Francia e della Germania balneum diventa sinonimo di bordello ... e la pratica viene contrastata e abbandonata.
Bisognerà attendere il XIX secolo e la diffusione dell'idroterapia, perchè vi sia una nuova riscoperta ed una progressiva diffusione dei bagni e delle terme, inizialmente riservati ad un'utenza d'elite che si recava in questi stabilimenti a "passar le acque" ...
Approfondimento ...
Bath (English)
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