A thermal complex referable to a maritime villa of imperial age was brought to light in the 80s of the last century in Bagnoli district. The remains, totally devoid of masonry in elevation, have a planimetric configuration from which we can distinguish the “calidarium” apsidal and the “frigidarium”, both places used for bathing. From the excavations have also emerged traces of water systems, a furnace and hot water pipes. Interesting the flooring in polychrome mosaics.
Next to one of the most beautiful beaches in Sicily there are the thermal baths of Bagnoli, a private facility built around the year 200 DC. Consisting of eight rooms, they keep a frigidarium (rooms for the cold bath) divided into three rooms, a calidarium (rooms for the sauna) and a tepidarium (an airlock to avoid excessive temperature changes).
At the service of the calidarium, also equipped with a third room with a tank for complete immersion, a praefurnium was built, the local furnace inside which the air circulating inside the plant was heated: thanks to a complicated system of cavities and tubular tiles still visible, the heat was transmitted from one room to another through the suspensurae, a sort of ante litteram heating system. A little imagination is enough for a hot bath.
Not far away, in the area of the port there is the Mercadante Quarry, a strip about a hundred meters long and one or two meters wide, fully visible only at low tide and for this discovery only in 1986: perfectly symmetrical sandstone disks, a stone quarry similar to the one, dating back to the same period, of Giardini Naxos.
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