BATH: Roman bathhouse life, Medieval church stair climb

I'm standing by the entrance to the Roman Baths, 

behind me is the Bath Abbey church. These top

two attractions are right by each other.

Bath has been an interesting, lively place to be for the past two-and-a-half days. It is physically very attractive, due to a consistent architectural look and a lovely natural setting, and it is also very walkable and engaging, with lots of small shops and eateries, and lots of people watching opportunities. Bath was deemed a World Heritage Site in 1987, by UNESCO. 

The Roman Baths

I have to start with talking about the Roman Baths, because that is Bath's biggest claim to fame. Bath is naturally in an area with hot mineral water springs. The Romans revered the presence of this magical hot water, and they built a temple near it in 60-70 AD, to worship Sulis Minerva (shown at right). 

Over succeeding years, an extensive bathing complex was added, next to the temple. After the Romans left Britain in 410 AD, the baths fell into disrepair and were buried as land filled in. Over time, other bathing facilities used the spring water, in the 12th century and later, but the full extent of the original Roman baths was not discovered until 1878. In the time since then, much work has been done to excavate and appreciate the wonders of the original Roman complex.

Plan of the original Roman Baths complex: The square at

upper left was the temple, the middle circle was where the 

spring water came up (and still does), the big rectangle is

what's visible now; you get to see remnants of the rest.

When we paid to enter the "Roman Baths" on Sunday at 3pm, I had no idea that the exhibits and museum would be so extensive. It includes excavated areas of hot rooms, changing rooms, temple altars, drainage systems, and more. You are given an audio handset which provides narration about what you are seeing, and you also view video reenactments at various locations. We spent three hours there!

One of my favorite displays was small metal inscriptions people had thrown into the hot springs, called "curse tablets". They contained requests for help with some issue, often petty theft, and some are quite colorful, e.g. "Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds and eyes in the goddess' temple." There's a great Wikipedia article specifically about the curse tablets found at Bath, and there's even a Youtube video about how to make your own curse tablet!

If you're not interested in history at all, this place may not be for you. But because you control the audio handset (you don't have to listen to everything), and because they work creatively at making the past come alive, it's hard not to be intrigued and impressed. 

This swimming pool area is the most commonly depicted part of the Roman Baths,
as it is outside. Only the pool itself and pillar bases are original; everything higher
is of a later construction. The original pool had a roof over it, in Roman days,
and presumably no algae!

This "Immersion Pool" room  has built-in seating, just like  a modern hot tub!

I'm watching a video re-enactment of women changing, displayed over the ruins of what was the changing room

Bath Abbey

The second most notable feature of Bath is Bath Abbey, a beautiful medieval age church built in a central area of Bath. There's records of there being a church in the same spot since the 900's AD, but the current one was built around 1500-1600 AD, with many significant updates made later (e.g. flying buttresses and fan vaulting were both added in the 1800's). The tall church is a helpful landmark in the city, and the wide plazas on two sides of it are full of people relaxing on the benches and listening to a varied range of busking performers.

It is a very beautiful church, outside and inside. During open hours, anyone can go inside, but on Monday we also decided to pay the additional fee to get a "Tower tour" and actually climb to the top! There were something around 200 steps to get all the way to the top, and I was glad I've actually been regularly doing stair climbs (at a parking garage in Palo Alto), because the tour guide ascended at quite a speedy clip—and the other seven people on the tour (other than Doug) were probably all 30 or more years younger than me! We climbed ~120 steps to get to the bell ringing room, then another 50 or so to get to the bells themselves, then another 30 or so to get to the very top. 

The stairs

The bell ringer room.
One way bells are rung is pulling
on the ropes currently looped up high.

In the actual room with the bells!

Us at the very top! Looking out, at bottom left is the open-to-the-air swimming pool part of the Roman Baths which is shown earlier in this post.

We did other cool things in Bath, too; you'll have to just ask us about our visits to the Circus and the Crescent, about the woman who dared to paint her door yellow, about "hanging loos" and about seeing a redwood, a sequoia, and a dawn redwood tree in Sydney Gardens...

Next Post and Question Answer

Tomorrow we hope to try doing a version of Roman bathing ourselves in the morning... we tried today, but for various reasons it didn't work out. After that, we'll be renting a car and Doug will drive us to Oxford! 

In the meantime, according to a Pew research article, the answer to the question I posed yesterday, "What % of Americans have never been abroad?"is 27%. It was actually smaller than I thought, but if you add in the percent of Americans who have only gone to one another country (19%, likely to be Canada and/or Mexico), the total number goes to 46%.

It was nice to chat with the Queen.