230px, ''Caldarium'' from the Roman baths at Bath, England. The floor has been removed to reveal the empty space where the hot air flowed through to heat the floor.
A (also called a ''calidarium'', ''cella caldaria'' or ''cella coctilium'') was a room with a hot plunge bath, used in a
Roman bath complex.
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The boiler supplying hot water to a baths complex was also called .
This was a very hot and steamy room heated by a
hypocaust
A hypocaust () is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm the upper floors a ...
, an
underfloor heating
Underfloor heating and cooling is a form of Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, central heating and cooling that achieves indoor climate control for thermal comfort using hydronics, hydronic or electrical heating elements embedded in a fl ...
system using tunnels with hot air,
heated by a furnace tended by slaves. It was also the hottest room in the regular sequence of bathing rooms; after the ''caldarium'', bathers would progress back through the ''
tepidarium
The ''tepidarium'' was the warm (''tepidus'') bathroom of the thermae, Roman baths heated by a hypocaust or underfloor heating system. The speciality of a ''tepidarium'' is the pleasant feeling of constant radiant heat, which directly affects the ...
'' to the ''
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 ...
''.
A in both public and private baths followed a common plan which had three main parts.
The common arrangement would include a warm-water bath -- usually called , but also referred to as or -- sunk into the floor, a semicircular alcove -- -- where bathers would sit in order to induce sweating, and in the middle of the room a vacant space -- or -- meant for physical exercise before going to sit in .
The bath's patrons would use
olive oil
Olive oil is a vegetable oil obtained by pressing whole olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea'', a traditional Tree fruit, tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin) and extracting the oil.
It is commonly used in cooking for frying foods, as a cond ...
to cleanse themselves by applying it to their bodies and using a
strigil to remove the excess. This was sometimes left on the floor for the slaves to pick up or put back in the pot for the women to use for their hair.
The temperature of the is not known exactly. However, a floor surface temperature above would have been uncomfortable to stand on with bare feet.
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See also
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Ancient Roman bathing
Bathing played a major part in ancient Roman culture and society. It was one of the most common daily activities and was practiced across a wide variety of social classes.
Though many contemporary cultures see bathing as a private activity cond ...
References
External links
Greek and Roman bathsat the
Perseus Project
The Perseus Digital Library, formerly known as the Perseus Project, is a free-access digital library founded by Gregory Crane in 1987 and hosted by the Department of Classical Studies of Tufts University. One of the pioneers of digital libraries, ...
Ancient Roman baths
Rooms
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