Thermal Baths

From piazza Vittorio Emanuele you can walk by the alley on the left of Palazzo dei Congressi, behind the Caserma Carabinieri. The building of the Thermal Baths, set along the northern Forum wall, occurred in the early centuries of the roman imperial age, at the end of I - II cent. AD, about 1900 years ago.

The remains of a previous public building, maybe an Hellenistic Bouleuterion, were unearthed below the Thermal Baths level during some test trenches along the western limit of the area. The building, where the town council met, the boule, it would be dated 4-5 centuries before the Roman baths, around the III-II century BC, about 2200 years ago.
Just in this place four basis for honorary statues were unearthed: they all bear inscriptions to honor eminent citizens and well-deserving figures, dating back to the Hellenistic age.

Three great rooms of the Thermal Baths, whose use was a calidarium or a tepidarium (with pools of hot or tepid water) can stil be seen: they were paved with marble slabs (crustae) heated by the praefurnia (heating rooms).
You can still see the small rounded or square brick pillars (suspensurae), which let the hot air circulate below the floorings and through clay pipes set along the plastered walls.

It's worth noting the finding of some marble shreds of Roman Calendar dating back to late Augustan or Tiberian age (meaning to the first half of the I century AD), and a marble fragment of Fasti Consulares including the list of the Consoles from 39 to 34 BC, now both on show at the Archaeological Museum of Badia Vecchia.