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After dark tours at Rome's ancient baths

Few visitors to Rome get to see the Baths of Caracalla, the ruins of the third-century leisure complex that could hold up to 1,500 bathers. Even fewer visitors get to see them at night.

Night tours of Baths of Caracalla, Rome. Which is a shame, because there may be no better time to see Rome's ruins, the baths included, than when the crowds have gone, the air is cool, and the silence that comes with abandonment – a silence that has accompanied the structures for most of their existence – returns.

The problem, of course, is that few sites open at night. But in Rome that is changing this autumn. While the Baths of Caracalla have been used in the past for evening opera performances, they're now open for guided night tours, too. The tours, in English and Italian, will run each Saturday night until 23 October. (The Colosseum is also open on Saturday nights until 2 October, although not for the first time).

Originally, the baths spanned some 28 acres (11 hectares) with walls soaring several stories high. The vaulted ceilings were so elegant that architects copied them for New York City's original Penn Station. Boasting frigidarium (cold bath), tepidarium (warm bath) and caldarium (hot bath), it also had an Olympic-sized swimming pool, two different gymnasiums for weightlifting, boxing, and wrestling, and – for those who wanted to exercise the mind as well as the body – a library with both Latin and Greek texts. Meanwhile, shops and restaurants ensured no bather went without in this pre-cursor to the modern-day leisure centre.

But that's where all similarities with today's utilitarian spas end. Originally lavished with glass-paste mosaics, frescoes, and hundreds of sculptures, the baths also held some of the most important artworks of ancient Rome. One of the most famous is the Farnese Bull, a colossal sculptural group carved in the second century BC from a single block of marble.

You won't see much of this remaining today - the Farnese Bull is now in the Naples Archaeological Museum - but there are still fragments of mosaic depicting dolphins and sea monsters dotting the floor and resting against the walls – but you will get a better sense of the grandeur and sheer scale of imperial Roman building than you will, say, among the more-modest ruins of the emperor's palaces on the Palatine.

It's all the more impressive when you remember that Caracalla's complex was far from the only bath complex in Rome. Emperor Nero built a public bath; so did Agrippa, Titus, Trajan, Diocletian, and Constantine, each trying to outdo the other. In all, there were an estimated 900 baths in the ancient city.

And the best reason to take a night tour of the Baths of Caracalla? The atmosphere. Against the black sky, spotlights emphasise each detail of ancient architectural sophistication, but highlight, too, the sense of loss of each crumbled brick, and each fallen-down arch.

• Tours of the Baths of Caracalla, led by archaeologists, are offered in English and Italian from 9pm to midnight (English tours are at 10pm only) each Saturday until 23 October. The guided tour costs €10, €8 for children, while entrance is free. To book, call +39 06 39967700.

Author: Amanda Ruggeri | Source: Guardian [September 21, 2010]