The Quirinal Hill, as seen from the Palatine.

On the south-western side of the court there are considerable remains. In the gardens of the monastery of S. Bernardo, part of the cavea of a theatre (A) with a radius of about seventy yards, may be traced, not unlike that in the Thermæ of Titus. The seats of this are gone, but parts of the back wall with niches remain. On each side of this are traces of rectangular chambers, and at the corners stand two round buildings, one of which is nearly perfect, and has been converted into the Church of S. Bernardo. The ancient domed roof with its octagonal panelled work is still standing. Part of the other rotunda at the southern corner is also left, and has been built into the end of the Via Strozzi.

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The red lines mark the conjectural restorations.

The north-western side of the court ran parallel to the Via di Venti Settembre from the Church of S. Bernardo. It contained, according to Palladio’s plan, two semicircular exedræ (LL) for philosophical conversation or disputation, and some other rooms the purpose of which is not known. The Ulpian libraries are said to have been transferred to these baths from the Forum Trajani. In this spacious court stood a great pile of buildings, the centre of which was occupied by a great hall (D), now the church of S. Maria degli Angeli. The pavement of this was raised above the ancient level of the ground by nearly eight feet, when Michael Angelo undertook to convert the ancient building into a church, and thus the bases of the columns remain buried, and new bases of stucco work have been placed round them. This roof must therefore have been in ancient times considerably more lofty than at present. The ancient roof was 120 feet high, and roofed as now, with an intersecting vault in three compartments, supported by the eight colossal ancient granite pillars. These columns of Egyptian granite with their Corinthian and composite capitals form the sole relic of the magnificence of the hall. In the modern church the transept corresponds to the longer axis of the ancient hall, and the nave to the shorter. Vanvitelli, who altered the arrangement of the church in 1749, threw out an apse for the choir on the north-east side, and made the circular laconicum (C) of the old Thermæ serve as an entrance porch.

Antiquarians are not agreed as to the purpose of this great central hall. Scamozzi, in his edition of Palladio, calls it a xystus for athletic exercises, but, following the analogy of the Thermæ of Caracalla, the baths at Pompeii, and some of the other great thermæ, we should rather suppose it to have been the tepidarium. This view is confirmed when we notice that the laconicum or sudarium (C) is on one side, and the natatio (F) for the cold baths on the other, between which the tepidarium was kept at a mean temperature.

The two wings of the central building were occupied by large peristylia, with cold piscinæ in the centre of each (EE). Round these peristylia were built various rooms for athletic exercises, called sphæristeria and gymnasia.

The style of brick building used in these Thermæ, recalls that of the Basilica of Constantine, where we see the bricks irregularly and hastily laid; and the whole of the architectural details which have been preserved seem to point to the same period. Positive evidence of the date and the builder is not however wanting. An inscription, which was still to be seen two hundred years ago in the thermæ, and which has been partially preserved to us, when compared with three others which were found in the neighbourhood, shows that Maximianus gave orders for building these thermæ when he was absent in Africa, during his Mauretanian campaigns, and intended them to be dedicated to the honour of his brother Diocletian. The dedication took place after the abdication of Diocletian and Maximianus, when their successors Constantius Chlorus and Galerius Maximianus had begun their reign, A.D. 305, but before the death of Constantius in 306. The old chronologers place the date of the commencement of the buildings in 302, which agrees very well with the date of the Mauretanian campaigns of Maximian.

Baronius accounts for the preservation of so large a part of these thermæ by the statement that they were considered to be a monument of the Diocletian persecution. There was a tradition, he says, that Diocletian, after dismissing some thousands of his soldiers because they held the Christian faith, compelled them to work as slaves in the erection of his thermæ, and ordered them to be martyred when they had finished the building. It has also been said that the bricks are in some cases marked with a cross, but this is not well authenticated.