page_title: Baths of Caracalla
section_title: Subterranean features
hierarchical_section_title: Baths of Caracalla / Description / Subterranean features
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Roma, Terme di Caracalla. Ambienti di servizio sotterranei, liv. 1.
context_page_description: The Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Italy, were the city's second largest Roman public baths, or thermae, likely built between AD 212 and 216/217, during the reigns of emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla. They were in operation until the 530s and then fell into disuse and ruin.
  However, they have served as an inspiration for many other notable buildings, including the Baths of Diocletian, Basilica of Maxentius, the original Pennsylvania Station and Chicago Union Station. Art works recovered from the ruins include famous sculptures such as the Farnese Bull and the Farnese Hercules.
  Today the Baths of Caracalla are a tourist attraction.
context_section_description: Discovered in 1912 by Ettore Ghislanzoni, the mithraeum at the baths is considered the largest documented gathering space for the worshippers of Mithra, the Persian god in vogue with the military and mostly lower class men, in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. The mithraeum was approximately 23 m (75 ft) long and 10 m (33 ft) wide with a cross-vaulted ceiling. It can be only roughly dated by the two main events associated with the baths: the mithraeum was created after the complex was completed circa AD 217 and it was probably no longer in use when the aqueduct supplying the complex was cut in the 530s.
  The floor of the main room was covered with a black and white mosaic. Benches lined the walls. A fresco portraying Mithra (or a torch bearer) is on the western wall. The only other ornamentation was a marble block, roughly carved into the shape of a snake. In the floor near the entrance a circular pit was found covered with a marble slab, with a terracotta bowl containing the remains of staves of wheat. A rectangular hole in the floor gives access to a small tunnel that runs under the center of the main hall into an adjoining room, where there is an entrance/exit with staircase. This, a unique feature in a mithraeum, has been controversial. Most scholars view this as a fossa sanguinis, a ritual pit over which the bull at the center of the Mithraic mythology was slaughtered, bathing one or more initiates in its blood. Others think it was used as a sort of stage trap door allowing a person to stage a surprising entry into the room.
  In a nearby room, a statue of Aphrodite Anadyomene was found in 1912. It is now located in the Museo Nazionale Romano at the Baths of Diocletian.
  Apart from housing the mithraeum, the tunnels served to heat the baths and as sewers for the outflow of water. They were also used to store the fuel for the furnaces – which are estimated to have burned around 10 tons of wood per day. Storage capacity had been estimated at more than 2,000 tons of wood.
  Overall, these tunnels ran for hundreds of meters underneath the main structure. They were lit by skylight-type windows that allowed the air to circulate, thus keeping the stored wood from rotting.
  An underground water mill was excavated beginning in 1912. First thought to be medieval in origin it is now considered to date to Antiquity. It may have been a part of the original workings of the baths. Fire damage indicates it was burned in the 3rd century, but rebuilt with some alterations.
caption: Tunnel with skylight
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