Baths of Caracalla — 216 AD
The largest building in Rome. Sixteen hundred bathers at once, in water heated by wood fires beneath the floor. The hypocaust. The genius of a civilization that valued cleanliness as civic virtue.
You begin here. The shock of cold water on heated skin. The body wakes up. The mind stops its chatter.
The gradual ascent. Conversations begin. This is where business was conducted, politics debated, philosophy argued over steaming pools.
The hypocaust exhales. The mosaic floor burns your feet. Sweat carries everything away. You emerge, as the Romans said, purified.