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Baths of the Aqueduct

Excavation:
1934 (Dir. Prof. V. Correia).

Available documentation:
General drawings of the area of the old
excavations (1962) scale 1/200, with
successive corrections and additions.
Corrections and final interpretation of
Virgílio H. Correia in 1995.

Brief Description:
Thermal building incompletely dug.

Bibliography of the excavation:
Only sparce references to the works exist .
Cf. Alarcão 1992, 50 and 53; Coelho 1996,
passim; DGEMN 1948 fig. 17-18; Oleiro et
al. 1974, 22-23.







Mapa das Ruinas de Conimbriga, com as Termas do Aqueduto selecionado
Fotos alusivas às Termas do Aqueduto. Estes links abrem uma nova janela


The entrance in this thermal complex would be located in the street West of it, which outlined a residential area. Its plan is sequential angular and an isolated body formed by four apses inserted in it stands out attached to the rest of the building. The access, not very clear, was done by a dressing-room of small dimensions that, through a door, opened to the frigidarium, a room of rectangular plan quite wide, defined at the South for the wall of the aqueduct. In the frigidarium, to the West a cold, quite deep alveus of water existed. We must imagine that the actual level doesn't correspond to the one of the original building, since in some areas we can observe the foundation of walls. From the frigidarium, the bather could move to the natatio, to the East, decorated with a small apse sided by the access staircase and where a small fountain should sprout, or he coulded access the warm zone, through a door placed in the salient of the central body, cutted an apse. This last area was built as an independent block in agreement with its functionality. The pposite apses to closer the frigidarium would be the zone destined to tepidarium, the apse located West certainly supported an alveus. The suspensura is made with small arches. The caldarium pair of apses, to North, repeats the same outline of the tepidarium and is directly heated by a corridor furnace, with the aperture turning to Northwest. The external area, would have been landscaped and in the zone West of the complex, where placed the service zones; it is in this area where the draining and the access to the furnace of the caldarium.

The dimensions of this complex are reduced, but its disposition and the existence of a great frigidarium lead us to think that they are public baths, destined to serve the North sector of the city and, on the other hand, they are the close to the axis ways to the road Tomar / Coimbra.

Of the early-imperial building we know nothing, but there are some other elements. In 1936 an inscription was found by V. Correia sculpted in a rectangular plate of limestone, reading REMETIBVS / AUG (ustis). It is a dedication located in a public place, and that took the author of its discovery to consider this building as public baths. There are no doubts that these Remetes are divinities linked to the water and that "are part of that long list of aquatic divinities in which the North of Portugal is extremely rich ". Besides this inscription shows how important the Celtic religious inheritance was in Conimbriga. This inscription is dated to the II d.C. Another element that can corroborate the dating of this thermal sector is the discovery of a coin of the first year of reign of Caracala when cleaning the wall, seemingly associated to the structures of the baths preserved under it. The construction of these baths should correspond to the end of the II century or to the beginnings of III century, and they would have been remodelled when the construction of the late Imperial wall cut the earlier building.

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