Archaeologists in Pompeiian ancient Roman city buried by ash and lava in 70 BC. AD, unearthed a private bathhouse built more than 2,000 years ago, officials said Friday.
The opening includes gorgeous mosaics and is equipped with a series of hot, warm and cold rooms and a huge spa-style plunge pool.
“We have here perhaps the largest thermal complex in a private house in Pompeii,” said Gabriel Zuchtrigel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. “Members of Pompeii's ruling class created enormous banqueting rooms in their homes.”
Press Office of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii via AP, HO
Spa-like baths were found in the so-called Regio IX, the central part of Pompeii's park, still unexplored, where the main archaeological excavations reveal new aspects of the everyday life of Pompeians.
“It's these spaces that are really part of the 'Pompeii effect' — it's almost as if people left just a minute ago,” Zuchtrigel told CBS News BBC News.
Press Office of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii Via AP, HO
Zuchtrigel said wealthy Pompeii residents would often take a bath first and then have a banquet, so the private resort complex allows it to be done in one house.
“There is room for about 30 people who could do the whole procedure, and it can also be done in public baths. So there is a corridor, a very warm environment, and also a large tub with cold water,” he said.
Recently, archaeologists working in the same area found a bakery, a laundry, two villas and the bones of three people who died during the eruption of Mount Vesuviuswhich destroyed both the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Press Office of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii Via AP, HO
The bodies belonged to a woman clutching jewelry and coins and a young man in his 20s, the BBC reported.
“The pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius came down the street in the immediate vicinity of this room and caused the wall to collapse and that effectively crushed it to death,” Sophie Hay, an archaeologist at Pompeii, told the BBC. “The woman was still alive when he was dying — imagine the trauma — and then that room was filled with the remnants of the pyroclastic flow, and that's how she died.”