Terme Achilliane

Beneath Piazza Duomo in Catania, the Terme Achilliane preserve vaulted halls of a Roman imperial bath complex, including a four-pillar room and a marble-lined pool. The remains lie below the cathedral and the later fabric of the square.

Why it matters

The baths are a notable Roman-imperial monument in Catania. Their setting brings several layers of the city together: Roman vaults below, the cathedral above, and the Baroque square at street level.

What to notice

The central hall is a rectangular room of roughly eleven by twelve metres, roofed by cross-vaults carried on four large pillars. At its centre is a square basin, originally clad in marble, with a small column on its preserved base. Fragments of marble opus sectile flooring survive. Painted stuccoes with erotes among grapevines and harvest scenes are known from gouaches made by Jean Houël; the watercolours are now held at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. A later passage runs between the cathedral foundations.

Context and history

The complex belongs to the late Roman Empire: the encyclopedia record generally places its construction in the fourth century AD — possibly older, by some modern studies — and preserves a poignant administrative note in a Greek inscription on Lunense marble, recovered in six fragments and now in the civic museum of Castello Ursino. The inscription commemorates restoration completed by the governor Flavius Felix Eumathius, and records that around 434 the building was scaled back to save firewood for heating — a late-antique city already economising. The inscription also preserves the ancient name associated with the baths. After the Arab conquest the monument was misread for centuries: Houël, visiting in the eighteenth century, believed he was drawing "un colossale tempio di Bacco", a colossal temple of Bacchus, while the man who actually cleared the site — Ignazio Paternò Castello, prince of Biscari, excavating in the eighteenth century — correctly identified a bath building, freeing from the earth the debris that the 1693 earthquake had poured over it. In the nineteenth century the architect Ittar redrew its plan, the historian Adolf Holm described it, and further finds of 1856 under the Seminario dei Chierichi and towards via Garibaldi showed the complex extended far beyond the single hall. The cathedral above was founded in 1088. Earthquakes in 1169 and 1693 affected the site; the underground remains were later reinforced during the piazza works of 2004–2006.