About 2,000 years ago a troop of Romans was walking along and spotted this Celtic temple beside some hot springs. They felt it was a gift from the gods. They decided to build a temple there to Minerva, who the Celtics had named Sulis so they kept the name. The Roman engineers drove massive oak pilings into the the mud and surrounded the springs with a lead lining to capture the water. Over the course of many years they built a massive religious complex surrounding the baths. When fully operational, the place was incredible. Bathing there was worship to them.
In more modern times, they decided the waters were curative. Kings, Queens and everyone else with money came to soak in the supposedly miraculous waters. It was supposed to cure everything from yellow fever to baldness. (BTW - I drank a glass, it tasted like swimming pool water - I am still bald - and thirsty)
Some of the rooms had heated floors, they had raised the floors up on rocks and channeled the warm air under the floors. The springs still flow today, over 1 million litres of water per day, which converted to gallons is somewhere in the neighborhood of three. (Okay, I don't know but I looked it up - about 257,000 gallons a day)
It is the best preserved example of Roman baths in existence today and makes you realize what amazing engineers the Romans were.
The pictures are:
1 - The exterior entrance
2, 3, 5 - The baths themselves - no longer open to the public
4 - One of the ornamental stones from the building
6 - Interior entrance, very modern and beautiful
7 - A model of what it looked like a thousand years ago
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