Naples tour

The road which leads from the Forum to the northern walls of the city has a part ending with two arches. The one to the right of the tempie of Jupiter is in honour of Nero Caesar. The other, which faced the main road of the city or so-called road of Fortuna, is dedicated to Caligola. His equestrian bronze was collected in fragments and is now in the Museum of Naples. At the cross-roads of Via del Foro and Via di Nola, we find the Forum Baths, excavated in 1823. They are divided into two sections, male and female, with a communal central-heating plant. After a short corridor there is the changing-room, with the small wooden cupboards for clothes and the seats where the customers could wait their turn. Leading off from the changing-room is the frigidarium at the centre of which is a circular tub for cold baths an opening in the roof allows Tight to enter. To the right is the tepidarium for warm baths and the calidarium used for steam baths, which were heated by means of a system of double’ walls, called concameratio, through which heat from the furnace passed. An elegant marble basin for washing reveals, in bronze lettering, the names of the magistrates who installed it in the baths at their expense, the price being 5,240 sesterces.