baignoire

This bathtub belonged to the thermal complex of a vast Gallo-Roman villa excavated by Karine Boulanger, between 2008 and 2009 (Inrap). The investigations carried out over an area of 5 hectares allowed us to study in its entirety an agricultural estate occupied between the second half of the 1st century AD and the 3rd century. With a total surface area of 80 m2, these baths were reserved for the master of the house and his guests. Whether private or public, the baths were considered in antiquity as places of leisure and sociability. After the checkroom (apodyterium) and a passage in the cold bath room (frigidarium) then the warm bath (tepidarium), the bather finished his journey with a hot bath (caldarium) in one of the two bathtubs placed on either side of the room. Its brickwork rested on a floor heated by the ground (hypocaust). Of a shape very close to our modern bathtubs, it was fed by a pipe which was recovered and a conduit made it possible to drain the basin directly on the floor of the room. Decorative rocks adorned its walls as well as the lower parts of the room's walls. That of the bathtub was decorated with an exceptional mosaic decorated with nymphs pulled by sea horses.