The Aïn Doura Baths are a series of Roman-era ruins located in

Dougga Dougga or Thugga or TBGG (; ) was a Berber, Punic and Roman settlement near present-day Téboursouk in northern Tunisia. The current archaeological site covers . UNESCO qualified Dougga as a World Heritage Site in 1997, believing that it repres ...

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

. The site contains ruins from a

Roman bath In ancient Rome, (from Greek , "hot") and (from Greek ) were facilities for bathing. usually refers to the large imperial bath complexes, while were smaller-scale facilities, public or private, that existed in great numbers throughou ...

dating to the 4th century, and is considered an important archaeological heritage site by the National Heritage Institute of Tunisia.

Description

The Aïn Doura baths were built in either the early 2nd, late 3rd"MODELISATION ARCHITECTUROLOGIQUE DES THERMES IMPERIAUX ROMAINS DE TUNISIE." LICHIHEB, HOUDA, KARIM BOUAITA, and MOUNIR DHOUIB. URL: http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:vUWt5_k-mTAJ:scholar.google.com/+A%C3%AFn+Doura&hl=en&as_sdt=0,8 or 4th century AD in Dougga, which was then an important city in Roman-era Tunisia. The original name of the baths is unknown, as the name Aïn Doura was first given to the site in the 19th century. The Aïn Doura baths are one of three separate bath complexes in Dougga. The baths were constructed of ''

opus africanum ''Opus africanum'' is a form of ashlar masonry used in Carthaginian and ancient Roman architecture, characterized by pillars of vertical blocks of stone alternating with horizontal blocks, filled in with smaller blocks in between. Its name der ...

'' and

rubble Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture; undressed especially as a filling-in. Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as 'brash' (compare cornbrash)."Rubble" def. 2., "Brash n. 2. def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionar ...

masonry Masonry is the craft of building a structure with brick, stone, or similar material, including mortar plastering which are often laid in, bound, and pasted together by mortar (masonry), mortar. The term ''masonry'' can also refer to the buildin ...

in the Punic–North African style. The structure contained a number of different rooms – such as heated rooms and

frigidarium A ''frigidarium'' is one of the three main bath chambers of a Roman bath or ''thermae'', namely the cold room. It often contains a swimming pool. The succession of bathing activities in the ''thermae'' is not known with certainty, but it is tho ...

– and latrines. Archaeological research implies that the baths were symmetrical. The baths also contain mosaics depicting aquatic animals and Roman figures.Darmon, J.P., 2004. Joueurs de dés et autres énigmes de la mosaïque aux chevaux de Carthage. ''Bulletin de la Société nationale des Antiquaires de France'', ''2000''(1), pp.106-118.

References

{{Reflist Roman sites in Tunisia Ancient Roman baths