The Roman Baths in the Carmelite Convent
This thermae complex, still in a good state of repair, owes its name to the fact that it was partially incorporated into the ex convent of Santa Maria dell’Indirizzo, today used as a school building.
In its turn the Carmelite convent takes its name from the church that was built on what tradition says is the site of a miracle.
In 1610 the Viceroy of Sicily, Don Pietro Girone, Duke of Ossuna, was travelling to Catania for the first time on board a Spanish ship. A terrible storm fell on the ship as it neared the Catanese coast and the viceroy, in desperation, called upon Maria; suddenly he saw a ray of light that gave him the indirizzo , literally the “address”, the route to follow in order to reach the port of Catania safe and sound. When he reached land he discovered that the light came from an icon of the Madonna del Carmine.
In 1635 a church rose in place of the icon, which was destroyed in the 1693 earthquake and was rebuilt together with the convent of the Carmelite fathers. The large baths complex near the convent was incorporated into the construction and ( perhaps because of this) it has remained in good condition up to the present day.
The Architectural Structure and Materials
Some ten rooms of the ancient baths complex remain with their original roofs; some steps lead to two interconnecting rectangular rooms and from these it is possible to reach a complex of rooms at a lower level.
Of all these rooms the largest, which has some rectangular-shaped openings, is octagonal in form and is covered by a dome. There are some low niches in the walls.
One of the most interesting features of this monument is that it still has remains, although fragmentary, of the furnaces that were used for heating the thermae rooms, the ducting for the circulation of hot air and the small canals for water flows.
The walls have a supporting element in cement mortar and a dressing in squared blocks of lava stone. Many bricks were used, especially in the arched passageways. As for the chronology of the various phases of the building, as yet there are no convincing hypotheses: according to some experts it dates to the late Imperial Age.
The Indirizzo baths, together with those at the Rotonda and the Terme Achilliane are evidence of how civilized Roman and late Roman Catania must have been.
The Importance of Baths in Ancient Rome
The thermae were public buildings common to all the cities of ancient Roman civilization. They certainly functioned as baths, but they were also meeting and reading places as well as gymnasius for the body and the spirit.
For these reasons the baths had an important social role.
Usually they consisted of three fundamental rooms: the frigidarium ( for cold baths), the calidarium ( hot baths) , and the tepidarium ( an intermediate area in which the bathers could relax).
copyright Giuseppe Maimone Publisher