Römische Bäder

Römische Bäder introduces Zurich through the Roman tradition of public bathing, hygiene, relaxation, and shared social life. These baths served people from different social backgrounds.

A typical complex moved visitors from a changing room to cold, warm, and hot bathing spaces. The sequence shaped each visit through temperature and movement. Roman baths also supported conversation, political discussion, business dealings, massages, exercise, food stalls, and everyday exchange. Their architecture used domes, windows, vaults, mosaics, frescoes, and marble.

Under raised floors, the hypocaust circulated furnace heat through open spaces beneath rooms and inside hollow walls. This system warmed selected rooms through hidden channels beneath the floors. The name Römische Bäder connects this place with a bathing tradition that also drew on ancient Greece.

Swiss Roman history also includes Iuliomagus near Schleitheim. That bath complex dates from the first to third centuries after Christ and stands inside a modern museum. Models and visualisations explain its layout and function.