Sunday, May 26: Roman Ruins

I’m already getting behind in keeping up the blog and we are only in the first week, but in my defense I have been out of internet range for the last 2 days.

Sunday’s big adventure was to travel to Augusta Raurica the sight of Roman ruins from the 1^st and 2^nd century A.D.   Jenny really enjoyed it and I did too but I soon realized how spoiled I was by what I had experienced last year in Israel.  Many of the Roman ruins in this area were located above ground rather than having been buried for centuries.  As a result many of the structures had been cannibalized, using large stone blocks as the foundation for newer buildings or they were just demolished to make way for more modern structures.  It was not until the late 1900s that archeologists were able to convince people of the historical significance of the ruins and work to preserve them.  Many of the structures we saw only had an original foundation or perhaps part of a wall.  They did have a nice museum with many artifacts, but still much of what was here originally was long gone.

 

Restored Amphitheater

Back wall of the amphitheater.

Reconstructed Grain mill

Reconstructed bakery oven

Mosaic Floor

Detail of mosaic

One of the more interesting items was the reconstruction of the bath houses.  The Romans evidently took their bath houses very seriously and they had many ‘modern’ aspects such as hot running water and heated floors.  The picture below shows a mural of how things may have originally looked.  On the ground in front of it are the excavated foundation of the bath house.  Red gravel is used to show which rooms would have been 'hot' rooms.

In pictures of ancient bath houses you often see the people depicted as wearing sandals.  This is because the floors were so hot.  There was a space about 3 feet high beneath the floor.  It was filled with and supported by ceramic columns.  There would be large furnaces which heated the air beneath the floor and the columns would in turn get heated and help retain the heat so that the floors were always hot.  The hot air which passed through the floors eventually exited into the steam rooms so they made double use of the heated air.

Jenny in the well house for the bath house