Roman Baths of Bagnoli
The Roman Baths of Bagnoli are an archaeological area located in the district of the same name in the territory of Capo d'Orlando.
The thermal complex of the San Gregorio-Bagnoli district was discovered in 1986, the year in which excavation and prospecting campaigns began in the entire valley.
The archaeological site includes the ruins of a thermal structure dating back to the III-IV century. A.D .. It is believed that this was annexed to an ancient Roman villa, but the failure to find structures referable to a villa leaves open any hypothesis of use of the complex. The baths consisting of eight rooms were most likely damaged by two seismic events that struck Sicily between the 4th and 5th centuries AD.
They consist of three environments: frigidarium, tepidarium and the calidarium. There was also the apodyterium, the dressing room, reused in the Byzantine era. The frigidarium, the place for the cold bath, consisted of three rooms. The tepidarium was the warm intermediate environment that constituted the passage from the frigidarium to the calidarium. This last room consisted of two rooms and was used for the hot or steam bath. The rooms were made warm thanks to cavities created under the floors and along the walls inside which the hot air from the praefurnium, the local furnace, circulated. Of notable artistic interest are the polychrome mosaics in stone and marble tessellatum that decorate the entire floor. To the west, outside the thermal structure, four tombs of the Byzantine era were found without equipment.
An important highlight was the discovery in situ of a rare gilt bronze buckle of the 7th century Trebizond type. A.D. which turns out to be the second specimen found in Sicily and which is exhibited in the Antiquarium of Capo d’Orlando, together with the finds found in other excavations in the city center.
