Open: daily
Closed 25- 26
The Roman baths located in the town of Bath (Somerset) are a
building of historical interest, one of the most important for
tourism in England. The complex is very well preserved, thanks to
which the architectural elements present in the building can be
appreciated very well. The baths themselves are located below street
level and the buildings built as a result of their discovery can be
divided into four groups among which are the "Sacred Spring", the
Roman Temple, the Roman Bath and the Museum House. These structures,
which are located at street level, date from the 19th century.
The baths are a major tourist attraction and can receive up to a
million visitors a year. In 2005 they were featured on the
television show of the same name as one of the "Seven Natural
Wonders" of the West Country. Once inside the complex, visitors can
view the baths and museum, although they cannot access the water. An
audio guide in multiple languages is available.
Bath Abbey . Tower-free guided tour 45-50 min., you can see the inside of the church roof and have a spectacular view of the city. The present Gothic church was built between 1499 and 1540. Open: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 13:00-14:30 and 16:30-17:30. Price: Free admission, £4.00 suggested as a donation.
Roman bath, monastery churchyard. Telephone.: +44 1225 477785, Fax:
+44 1225 477743, E-mail: romanbaths_enquiries@bathnes.gov.uk . Open:
January/February 9.30 to 16.30, March to June 9.00 to 17.00, July/August
9.00 to 21.00, September/October 9.00 to 17.00, November/December 9.30
to 16.30 (last admission in each case, open for another 1 hour after
that). Price: Adults: £17.50, Weekly £20; minimum discounts for seniors,
students, children and families. There is a combination ticket, which is
also valid in the meeting rooms.
Roman bath with the drinking
hall, where you can still drink the spring water today. The baths built
by the Romans were built over natural hot mineral springs. These are the
only hot springs in England. About 1,150,000 liters of water with a
constant temperature of 49 degrees flow from the source per day. The
temple of the goddess Sulis Minerva and the bathing facilities were
located in the center of the Roman city of Aquae Sulis. The beginnings
of the city go back to the time immediately after the conquest of
England by the Romans in the year 43 AD. The Romans lose the city in the
year 410 AD. The baths are used for body care and healing purposes. With
the construction of the baths, in 75 AD,. started in the 2nd century.
expanded A.D. The Roman baths were rediscovered between 1878 and 1895.
Further excavations took place in 1923-25 and 1971-73.
The museum has
a number of stone sculptures from the temple of the goddess Sulis
Minerva, which is located immediately below the current fountain hall.
It also houses Roman tin vessels and engraved precious stones, which
were thrown into the holy spring as an offering. Especially worth seeing
is the head of Minerva made of gilded bronze, the only found piece of a
life-size statue. As on the stone gorgon head from the pediment above
the temple entrance, one can observe the fusion of Roman elements with
uniform Celtic features.
The eastern baths served as a swimming pool.
The two different high floors are remarkable. one of which was probably
set higher to avoid overruns by the River Avon. The small semicircular
basin was fed with spring water, it was used as an immersion bath for
medical purposes: the patients sat on the stone benches at the edge of
the cheeks in such a way that the water reached up to their necks. There
was originally another bathroom behind this bathroom. You can still see
his stone slabs on the lowest floor, where the sewer runs towards the
river. It is believed that this bath was created because of the river
crossings and it was abandoned on September 2nd.Jh.it was replaced by a
series of higher, heatable rooms that served as steam baths. When the
water level of the river rose, it was necessary to raise the underground
boiler rooms (hypocausts). Only one mosaic has survived, originally the
floors of the rooms above it, decorated with mosaics, were located above
the supporting arrows (pilae).
The Large bathroom is the oldest of
the three bathrooms. Its dimensions are 12 by 24 meters, and it is 1
meter 60 deep. Steps lead into the water on all sides. On the bottom of
the basin, the lead plates laid by the Romans can be seen. The statues,
balustrades and column shafts are more recent. At the time of the Roman,
the bath was covered with a stone barrel vault. The sides were open so
that the steam could take off. Parts of the vault are located on the
edge of the swimming pool.
The Königsbad does not date from Roman
times, it was built around 1100 AD over the Roman water reservoir. By
that time, the Roman buildings had long since sunk into the mud. The
present facility is mostly from the 19th century. Below is the round
plunge pool filled with cold water. Originally, the large entrance hall
of the first construction period was located here, from where visitors
could look over the holy spring to the temple forecourt and the altar.
The best preserved warm air system (hypocaust) of the bathing complex is
located in the western baths. They serve as an art sauna. This was
followed by a series of smaller baths, which were filled with hot spring
water. Rheumatism and arthritis were treated here.
Meeting rooms and Fashion Museum, Bennett Street. Telephone.: +44
1225 477173, E-mail address: bathassemblyrooms@nationaltrust.org.uk .
Open: Daily from 10.00 to 18.00. Price: Meeting rooms £2.00, Fashion
Museum £7.75.
Holburne Museum, Great Pulteney Street. Telephone.: +44
1225 388569, E-mail address: enquiries@holburne.org . Note: Disabled
toilet. Open: Monday to Saturday 10.00 to 17.00, Sunday 11.00 to 17.00.
Price: Admission is free, except for special exhibitions.
Victoria
Art Gallery, Bridge Street. Telephone.: +44 1225 477233, E-mail address:
victoria_enquiries@bathnes.gov.uk . Note: Disabled toilet. Open: Tuesday
to Saturday 10.30 to 17.00, Sunday 13.30 to 17.00. Price: £6.
No. 1
Royal Crescent. The house of a middle-class family in the style of the
Georgian era. Open: Wed.-So. 10.00-17.30. Price: £ 11.
American
Museum and Gardens (Claverton Manor), Claverton Down, Claverton, Bath
BA2 7BD. Old manor house, which is preserved by the museum. The
exhibition is a rather curious hodgepodge. There is a grotto nearby.
Note: Disabled toilet. Published: End of March to October. Price: £13,
gardens only £7.50.
Royal Crescent
Barley Hall. The rectangular Queen Square is worth
seeing thanks to the uniform facades, it is a model of several other
such squares.
Royal Victoria Park
Previous park Landscaped garden (bus 2.
Disabled parking spaces only) . National Trust gardens with views over
Bath, ornamental buildings, Palladian-style bridges, lakes and forests.
For wheelchairs. Open: 10.00-17.00. Price: £8.
By plane
Bristol Airport (IATA: BRS) is 24 kilometres away.
Between 6.00 and 23.45 there is an express bus to Bath every day at
least every 30 minutes.
By train
Bath Spa Railway Station is
about 90 minutes away from the two London stations Paddington (with a
change in Slough) and Waterloo (direct), from which there are hourly
train connections. Regular trains also run to Bristol-Temple Meads
Railway Station about a 15-minute journey away. The station is located
on Dorchester Street.
By bus
There are regular bus connections
between Bath and the London-Victoria Coach Station bus stations, as well
as from London Heathrow Airport and London-Gatwick. It is located on
Dorchester Street, not far from the train station.
On the street
The M4 motorway passes outside Bath. From exit 18 it is still 16
kilometers to the city center.
The old town is within the loop of
the Avon. The main A36 road runs around the other bank as Lower Bristol
Rd or Pulteney St. South.
The local bus concession is held by First, which also operates the
city buses in Weston-super-Mare and Bristol (network plans). The bus
station is on Dorchester St., not far from the train station and
business center.
Within the Bath Fare Zone, 3-4 km around the bus
station, the single trip costs, as of Jan. 2022, £2.20, the 2-trip
ticket (valid until 4.30 a.m. the following day) £4.30. With the Bath
Zone Group Day day ticket, up to 5 people can travel unlimited for £10
on weekdays from 9.30 a.m., all day on weekends.
Lines 21, 31, 41
often connect outdoor “park & ride” places with the city center. Bus
lines with U go to the university. If you travel to the surrounding
area, the route-dependent West of England fare applies, which costs
between £2.30 from 3 miles and £6.50 for over 12 miles. There is also a
confusing system of daily, weekly and monthly tickets, some of which
require an app.
The first hot spring sanctuary erected on this site was built by the Celts, who dedicated it to the goddess Sulis, whose Roman equivalent would be Minerva. However, the name of Sulis continued to be used after the Roman conquest of Britain, a fact proven by the name of the town of Aquae Sulis (literally, "the waters of Sulis"). The Roman temple was built between the 60s and 70s and the thermal complex over the next 300 years. During the Roman occupation of the island under the reign of the Emperor Claudius, he ordered his engineers to bring oak poles in order to to provide the complex with a solid foundation and to surround the source from which the hot springs flowed with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. The complex included a caldarium (hot bath), a tepidarium (warm bath) and a frigidarium (cold bath). After the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain in the fifth century, the building fell into disuse and was eventually buried under constant process sedimentation. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle suggests that the original baths were destroyed during the sixth century.
The baths have undergone various modifications, including those from
the 12th century, when Juan de Tours built a building for curative
waters at the same source as the spring that provides water to the
baths, and those from the 16th century, when the The city government
built a new Queen's Bath located to the south of the spring. The spring
is currently located within a complex built in the 18th century by
architects John Wood (father and son). Visitors could drink the water
from the spring located in a room called the Pump Room, a
neoclassical-style room that is still in use today, both to collect the
spring water and to house visitors. The Victorian extension followed the
neoclassical tradition established by the Woods. In 1810 William Smith
opened a new building called the Bath Hot Spring in the lower part of
the complex, where he found that the economic failure of the baths was
not due to the drought of the spring, but to the fact that it circulated
through a new channel. . Smith restored the course of the water to its
original course and the baths filled without any problem.
Visitors enter through a room built in 1897 by J. M. Brydon. It is an
easterly continuation of the Great Pump Room with a glass dome on the
ceiling. Construction of the Great Pump Room began in 1789 by Thomas
Baldwin. Baldwin resigned in 1791 and John Palmer took over the project
until its completion in 1799.10 The elevation of Abbey Church Yard has a
center consisting of four Corinthian columns with entablatures and
pediment. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed
building. The north colonnade was also designed by Thomas Baldwin,
similar to the south colonnade except for the addition in the second
case of an upper storey erected in the late 19th century. The museum and
the Queen's Bath included a "bridge" built in 1889 by C. E. Davis
spanning the space between York Street and the City Laundry.
The museum that houses the thermal complex exhibits utensils from
Roman times, including those that were thrown into the sacred spring,
probably as offerings to the goddess Sulis. Among the various
discoveries made in the area, 12,000 Roman coins have been found,
representing the largest votive offering in Britain. A gilt bronze head
of the goddess Sulis Minerva found in 1727 can also be seen in the
museum.
The temple of the bath was raised on a podium more than
two meters high and the temple was accessed by climbing a few steps. At
the entrance were four large fluted columns in the Corinthian style
supporting a frieze and a decorated triangular pediment. Some parts of
the pediment, which measured 7.9 meters wide and 2.4 meters high, are on
display in the museum. Notable was the powerful central image of the
Gorgon's head on the pediment, which looked from a height of 15 meters
to those who approached the temple.
In the corners of the
pediment there is a pair of tritons, a mythological creature half man
half fish and servant of the god of the waters, Neptune. The center of
the lower left part is decorated by a dolphin, while the lower right
part features a hidden owl. The central part is decorated with
engravings of women carrying an oak leaf shield, thereby symbolizing
Victory. Above all, a large star stands out, located in what would be
the highest part of the building. Subjugated to the star is the gorgon's
head with snakes entwined between its beards, wings above the ears, and
a large mustache. However, there is debate as to whether this relief
represents a gorgon, as this creature it is normally female. There are
alternative interpretations that see the head as representing the god of
the sea, Oceanus, or as the Sun god of the Celts.
The remains of
the sauna heating system, the hypocaust, are also on display.
Late 19th-century statues of Roman emperors and governors of the province of Britain are vulnerable to the effects of acid rain and have therefore had to be protected by applying a coat of varnish every few years. inside the temple they are vulnerable to hot air which had the effect of depositing corrosive salts. To try to reduce this erosion, a new ventilation system was installed in 2006.
The City of Bath was vested with responsibility for the Hot Springs
in the Royal Charter of 1591 granted by Queen Elizabeth I. This
obligation has now passed to the body known as the Bath and North East
Somerset Council, which carries out policing of the pressure,
temperature and flow of these waters. The analyzes carried out on these
waters show that they contain sodium, calcium, and chloride and sulfate
ions in high concentrations.
The water that flows through the
baths is not considered safe for bathing, in part due to its still
current use as a passageway for various pipes and the discovery during
World War II of the radioactivity it contained. However, the greatest
danger of all lies in its status as a place of spread of infectious
diseases. In 1979 a girl accidentally drank some of the bath water while
swimming in them and died within five days of amoebic meningitis. Tests
showed that the origin of the meningitis was a bacillus of Naegleria
fowlerii26 which girl had fucked in the pool. After this death, the pool
was closed to the public, the state in which it remains today. A
building known as Thermae Bath Spa, designed by Nicholas Grimshaw &
Partners, was built in the vicinity of the Roman baths. This building
allows its visitors to bathe in water from wells drilled immediately
before the end of its construction.