The Old Baths

The Old Baths

A Bath in the Italian Style

 

By the time of Emperor Augustus, Sagalassos already had a bath complex (10-30 AD), considered to be the oldest Italian-style bath house in Anatolia. Most of this first bath building was later dismantled, partially incorporated into or filled in to support the much larger baths built in the 2nd century AD.

 

The ‘Old Baths’ had featured warm, tepid and cold water rooms. Other examples of such bath buildings are known from Pompeii, in the Campania region of Italy. The presence of Italian-style baths at Sagalassos could be explained by the fact that veterans from Central Italy had settled in this region during the reign of Augustus.