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Stabian Baths (VII,2)
This is the city’s most ancient bath building (2nd cent. BC), built over a previous facility (4th-3rd century BC) and later restored. East of the porticoed central palaestra are the bathing rooms, divided into women’s and men’s sections: frigidarium (with pool for cold bath), apodyterium (dressing room), tepidarium (warm room), caldarium (hot bath), furnaces (to produce heat). To the north is a large latrine, to the west a swimming pool (natatio). At the entrance and in the palaestra we can still see elegant decorations of polychrome stucco, dating from just before the eruption in 79 AD, with figurative and mythological subjects in the ‘fourth style’; made of lime and calcite, stucco was moisture resistant. Note the method used to heat the rooms: the floor was supported by short brick pillars (suspensurae) to leave an empty space (hypocaustum) below, through which the warm air produced by the furnaces could circulate: it also flowed through ducts in the walls, to envelop the room completely.
