Roman Baths United Kingdom

Legendary

Ancient Roman spa built around hot springs where visitors once bathed, prayed, and tossed coins to the gods.

Photo by A S

Roman bathers had a problem: people kept stealing their clothes. So they wrote angry messages on thin sheets of lead, folded them up, and threw them into the spring.

The messages were addressed to the goddess. One asked her to make the thief go blind until a stolen cloak came back. Another wanted two stolen gloves returned, or else the thief should lose "his mind and eyes."

About 130 of these curse tablets have been found. They're among the oldest prayers ever written in Britain.

The spring is the reason everything here exists. Water rises from deep underground at 46°C, more than a million liters a day, and it's the only natural hot spring in Britain.

Long before the Romans, the local Celtic people believed a goddess named Sulis lived in the steaming water. When the Romans arrived around 60 AD, they didn't argue.

They decided Sulis was really their own goddess Minerva under a different name. They built a temple to Sulis Minerva beside the spring and named the town Aquae Sulis, the Waters of Sulis.

Then they built the baths. The Great Bath, a pool lined with 45 sheets of lead and once covered by a huge vaulted roof, was the centerpiece.

Visitors came from all over Roman Britain and beyond. They soaked, gossiped, did business, and tossed coins into the spring as gifts to the goddess.

More than 12,000 of those coins have been pulled out of the water. It's the largest collection of Roman offerings ever found in Britain.

When the Romans left Britain around 410 AD, the baths flooded with mud and were forgotten. In 1878, a city engineer named Charles Davis went looking for a leak and found the Great Bath under the street instead.

Walk around the Great Bath at street level, then go down to stand beside the green water at the Roman level, where the stone pavements are original. Look for the bronze head of Sulis Minerva in the museum, found by workmen in 1727. At the end of your visit, taste the spa water from the fountain in the Pump Room, though don't expect to like it.