Model

Ideal reconstruction of Roman public baths, for which the baths of the archaeological site of Los Bañales, in the municipality of Uncastillo, province of Zaragoza, have been taken as a model. Includes two reproductions: one at 1:40 scale and another at 1:200 scale.

On a large scale, the entire exterior of the building is shown, including the roof. It is a set of polygonal rooms, attached to each other, of various sizes and with different types of roof: vaults and roofs with one or two slopes.

On a small scale, a partial reproduction of the hot springs is shown, with the rooms uncovered so that the interior of the rooms and even the underground infrastructure can be observed. Each room shows the interior structure specific to its function: the sauna is a small square room; The hot room (caldarium) and the cold room (frigidarium) are larger spaces, rectangular in plan and with pools, raised on steps in the first case and recessed in the pavement in the second; It also has a square floor plan and has the warm room (tepidarium) and the changing room (apodyterium), a large room with a continuous perimeter band on which niches are arranged to leave clothes and a long bench intended for sitting to change shoes. Smaller rooms are the reception and the services payment room. Annex, the oven room, which communicates with the rest of the building through air chambers under the floors (the construction arrangement of the hypocaustum under the caldarium and the frigidarium is detailed) and between the walls.

The model also has other explanatory resources incorporated into the architecture of the building itself: the presence of four human figures, in various positions, make it easier to identify the function and use of some spaces, while eleven metal plates, distributed at key points and marked in Spanish alphabet and Braille, they indicate the name of the rooms and other information of general interest. External to the model itself, but directly linked to its content, there is a voiceover in Spanish, activated by remote control, lasting five minutes in which the architecture and function of the hot springs represented are described.

Public baths in the Roman world were widely accepted and were essential buildings in all cities, despite the fact that the villas and homes of wealthy families had private baths in their homes. These communal baths were a highly demanded service and, although they were paid, the established rates were moderate and in many cases symbolic. The public was also varied and people from different social levels and different sexes attended, although men and women never shared the same spaces at the same time: if the hot springs were large, they had divisions of departments, and if they were medium or small size, different days or times were established for each of the sexes. The bathrooms represented in this model would in reality have a capacity of approximately fifty people, which at the time would be medium-sized public bathrooms.

Centered on this building, entry is through a three-arched door that leads, via stairs, to a waiting room and the room where the use of the hot springs is paid. A large door leads to the locker room, from where you can access the different bathrooms. Users of the hot springs had the possibility of following different routes through their rooms, depending on the personal taste of each one: In the sauna, a small room, there was an environment of intense heat suitable for sweating; The hot room had a swimming pool and was used for deep skin cleansing; The cold room also had a pool, in this case intended for toning baths; and the warm room was intended for relaxing massages, application of oils and ointments, combing hair and grooming.

Essential elements for visiting the bathrooms were a variety of personal hygiene instruments, such as mirrors, combs, scrapers, ointments... and above all special footwear with thick wooden soles, since the high temperatures of the walls and floor floor made its use necessary to avoid burns on the feet.

The high temperatures of the hot and temperate rooms were achieved through a heating system called hypocaust. It is an infrastructure of pipes and hollow chambers, built under the floor and in the walls of the building, through which hot water vapor circulates from large metal boilers placed on ovens continuously fed with firewood by stokers.