Fig. 94.—Plan of the Central Baths.
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Two small rooms (b, c) open upon the north entrance of the palaestra; one of them, perhaps, was to be a ticket office, for the adjustment of matters relating to admission, the other a cloak room, in which the capsarius would guard the valuables of the bathers.

Two doors admit the visitor from the palaestra to the series of bath rooms, one of them opening from the north end of the colonnade. The first room (i, l) was designed to answer the purpose of a store, with four booths (k, m, n, o) opening into it for the sale of edibles and bathers' conveniences.

The apodyterium (p), tepidarium (q), and caldarium (s) had each three large windows opening on the palaestra; two of those belonging to the tepidarium are seen in [Fig. 95]. None of the rooms were finished, though a hollow floor and hollow walls had been built in the tepidarium, caldarium, and Laconicum. The bath basins yet lacked their marble linings, and the two furnaces (at x and y) had not been built.

Five smaller windows on the southeast side of the caldarium looked out on a narrow garden, about which the workmen had commenced to build a wall to cut off the sight of the firemen passing to and fro between the two furnaces. The caldarium was so placed as to receive the greatest possible amount of sunlight, particularly in the afternoon hours, when it would be used; this was in accordance with a recommendation of Vitruvius, who says that the windows of baths ought, whenever possible, to face the southwest, otherwise the south.

Fig. 95.—View of the Central Baths, looking from the palaestra into the tepidarium.