Baths of Caracalla

Caracalla's baths opened in 216 and covered about eleven hectares, taking an estimated sixteen hundred bathers at a time through a sequence of hot, warm and cold rooms with two gymnasia, libraries and gardens; water came by a dedicated aqueduct branch and was heated by furnaces stoked in service tunnels beneath, where slaves worked out of sight. The Goths cut the aqueducts in 537 and the baths were abandoned. What remains is the brick core, stripped of its marble but standing to about thirty metres, with mosaic floors surviving in places. Opera is staged in the ruins each summer.

What you actually see

• The standing brick walls - a Roman interior surviving to thirty metres.
• The service tunnels - the underground level where the furnaces were worked.
• The mosaic floors - geometric paving surviving across large areas.
• The summer opera - Rome's opera house staging productions in the ruins.

When to go

April to June and September to October; summer opera runs in the ruins in July and August, which restricts daytime access on performance days. The site closes Mondays.

Honest expectations

All the marble, statues and fittings are gone, so the effect is scale rather than decoration. There is little shade. Opera season limits visiting hours.

Nearby

The Circus Maximus lies north; the Appian Way runs south.