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While royal bathhouses and bathrooms were common among ancient Chinese nobles and commoners, the public bathhouse was a relatively late development. In the Song dynasty (960–1279), public bathhouses became popular and ubiquitous, [ 5 ] and bathing became an essential part of social life and recreation.
Roman bathhouses often contained a courtyard, or palaestra, which was an open-air garden used for exercise. In some cases, the builders made the palaestra an interior courtyard, and in other cases, they placed it in front of the bathhouse proper and incorporated it into the formal approach.
Public bathhouses were a prominent civic and urban institution in Roman and Hellenistic culture and were found throughout the Mediterranean world. They remained important in the cities of the early Byzantine Empire up to around the mid-6th century, after which the construction of new bathhouses declined and existing ones were gradually abandoned.
Many Romans would use the baths as a place to invite their friends to dinner parties, and many politicians would go to the baths to convince fellow Romans to join their causes. The thermae had many attributes in addition to the baths. There were libraries, rooms for poetry readings, and places to buy and eat food.
The baths were found near the house’s banquet hall, suggesting the Roman residence lent itself to being a “stage for celebration” that goes beyond what we would consider a “private space ...
Roman citizens came to expect high standards of hygiene, and the army was also well provided with latrines and bath houses, or thermae. Aqueducts were used everywhere in the empire not just to supply drinking water for private houses but to supply other needs such as irrigation, public fountains, and thermae. Indeed, many of the provincial ...
Cagaloglu Hamami Luxuriating in a bathhouse was a stalwart of ancient Rome, where these first spas were the go-to spots for healing and relaxation. But there are still bathhouses all over the ...
There were, however, certain features that pervaded most bathing structures. The public baths are made up of one or more rooms that are typically circular. This circular floor plan is called a tholos. The key feature in early Greek baths was the hip baths centered in the tholos. While the bathing space was public, the hip baths were used ...