Diocletian's Baths

While the Baths of Caracalla were left to ruin, and therefore are a quite impressive ruin, Diocletian's Baths suffered in part some recycling. So if one reaches the very busy Plazza della Republica you meet the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, alias the Tepidarium of the Baths of Diocletian. Fun palace turned into a rather miserable church.

The fountains of the Piazza are rather jolly and this is a rather underrated square, or rather it would be a nice place to be were it not for the traffic. You wouldn't want to cross these roads blindfold put it that way.

The church does indeed look like one cannibalized out of a rather greater structure.

 There were one or two modern bits of art I rather liked.

 But otherwise its the overwrought Baroque that one soon becomes over familiar with in Roman churches

Behind it are the rest of the remnants of this huge Baths complex, although with my unerring sense of direction I found I had to go all the way round the block before I found the entrance to the Baths museum. The entrance is through a picturesque little garden of architectural fragments. I would rather fancy a garden like this myself.

The rest is formed into two parts really, an ex-Carthusian monastery which has rather grand un-Roman buildings, containing a lot of Roman statuary, the best of which is in the cloisters in the middle. Note especially the animal heads surrounding the central fountain, once in the Forum of Trajan.

 

The other part are the great halls of the old Baths, now restored (in the sense of later additions being extracted, with a few choice bits of statuary (and the odd tomb) being inserted).