Natatio. The natatio.
The frigidarium. Tepidarium.
Caldarium.
Caldarium here, with its radiating niches, as you can see.
So, natatio, frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium, all in
succession and then, the other rooms act symmetrically arranged around them.
Duplicated one, mirror images of one another, on either side.
In this plan, it doesn't show the
frigidarium, as if it were triple groin vaulted.
But most who've studied this, believe that it was.
the, and I'll show you a view of that in a moment.
Before I get to that, a view into the remains of the Baths of Hadrian, today.
And we see with the Baths of Hadrian, a very major
change, in terms of building stone, in the city of Leptis Magna.
And that is, while up to this point, they were using entirely local stone.
All of a sudden, in the time of Hadrian and it's not surprising I suppose,
with Hadrian and his, his era being a
time of international travel and the like, internationalism.
We see the the, the beginning to import marbles from
all over the world, for the buildings of Leptis Magna.
This being the prime example. We have building stone in this building.
We have some local stone in this building, but we also
have marble from Greece, marble from Asia Minor, and even marble
from Italy, used in the baths of Hadrian, at Leptis Magna,
making it a very very quite magnificent building to say the least.
So, this a very significant change in the way
they are thinking about the building materials used for the
structures of Leptis.
Here is a re, restored view of what scholars, some scholars,
at least, believe the frigidarium of the baths of Hadrian looked like.
Very similar to what we imagine, that the frigidaria
of baths in Rome looked like, of the imperial type.
Think of the later, the later baths of Caracalla that
we looked at last time, with the same triple groin-vaulted
schemes, supported by engaged columns on
either side, and then, very heavily decorated.
It could be, that those who have thought about this, have been
too influenced by spaces like the frigidaria in, in the baths of Caracalla.
Because to do this, we know that very little concrete was used in
Leptis Magna, to do this kind of building, at this kind of scale.
To, to vault this kind of room at this
kind of scale, you would need to use concrete construction.
So, there are two possibilities here.
Either they did use it in this building and
used it very well, to create a space that
was quite comparable, to what was being put up
in Rome or it may have been vaulted somewhat differently.
But those who've studied this with, with
some, you know, who are not very knowledgeable
about this kind of thing, seem to believe that this was a groin vaulted building.
Now groin vaults can be done out of material, other than concrete.
We saw some some vaulting in Pompeii, not groin
vaults, but regular vaults in Pompeii, that were made out of, out of wood.
But to do it at this scale would be near impossible
and one has to imagine that, concrete would have been used.
So that's, that's controversial and we don't
know for sure, exactly how this building
was vaulted.