Bath, England - Roman Baths - August 2024

The Romans discovered the hot springs at Bath around 43 AD, and recognized their significance. The springs were already known to the pre-Roman Celtic people of Britain, but the Romans finished construction around 70 AD. The healing properties were discovered by King Lear's father (reputedly), so the baths grew to accommodate more visitors into several baths and temples. Similar to the Bath Abbey, it fell into disrepair over the years, but was excavated in the 1870s. The Roman Baths were a big part of Bath becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After wandering around the City Centre as described in the last post, including the amazing shop Jacks of Bath where they were playing Kendrick Lamar, we came to the Baths for our 6pm reservation. I had wanted to get us as late in the day as possible to see if we could watch the sunset over the baths, or maybe catch some steam rolling off of them. While the latter didn't happen, we were pretty happy with the experience.

The water used to be potable straight from the spring, and that's where most of the healing properties resided. These days, you should not drink the water directly from the spring. However, at the end of the tour, there's a spring where they have filtered the water and you can drink it from a fountain using a little dixie cup thing. I'd read that some people's stomachs couldn't handle it well, but both A and I tried it - it was not awesome, but we still completed it. We then went to the store to purchase a tiny liquor bottle that we could empty and instead fill with our dixie cup leftover spring water, as there didn't seem to be any water available for purchase - we brought it home and I got a new label printed for the bottle. It now resides on a shelf in our living room that's filled with travel mementos.

The busts around the top of the main bath were lovely.

I think this was a Gorgon, but that's the bulk of my recollection about this dude.

Getting ready for a Bath.

This statue of Caesar overlooks the Baths. You can see the Bath Abbey in the background; the Kingston Parade square is all that separates the two.

Another shot of the Abbey looming just behind the Baths.

The Baths have a ton of little stone seats next to the sub-ground level pool. The upper level has a walkway that goes around the pool, three sides of which have statues of Roman figures every few feet.

A Bath-level shot of the pool, columns, and statues. The Gorgon head arch is in the upper left of the photo.

A similar view in landscape, with a bird and after editing out some people.

While I edited people out of the other photos, I left them in this one. For some reason, I really liked the sense of adventure with the backpack, etc.

A little earlier, before the Golden Hour.

Another shot just before the Golden Hour.