The Diocletian Baths were built in Rome Around 300 A.D. The largest eloquent imperial and public bathing house ever built in Rome could hold up to 3,000 bathers.
The Baths were centers of socialization for the elite as well as the less rich. The wealthier citizen would frequent the baths more often, almost daily, whereas the average working man, who certainly had less money to spend, would visit perhaps only once a week.
The public baths were built and managed by the state and normally covered large spaces of land.
The Diocletian Baths were built in brick on a rectangular area extending over 13 hectares.
The enormous structure included a central complex with hot and arm baths as well as pools of cold water which ran along the smaller axis and gymnasiums which ran along the larger axis all enclosed with a large garden around it.
Here other integrated structures including, meeting rooms, libraries, and round rooms in the angles, could be found.
The exterior of the baths was originally covered with carved stucco having a likeliness to that of marble. The exquisite interiors were lavishly adorned with colourful marbles, statues, mosaics and large monolithic granite basins in porphyry, now found in the Vatican Museums.
The lavish imperial baths of Diocletian functioned up until 537 when the water from the aqueducts that fed them were cut off by the Goths leaving them dry.
In later years, parts of these enormous baths, were used for other purposes including one of the four sites of the National Roman Museum.
Later the area around the enclosure was transformed into the church of San Bernardo alle Terme and an open air cinema and restaurant.
Today the Piazza della Repubblica sits in what once was the central 'esedra' or semi-circular courtyard of the Diocletian thermal baths. The basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which sits in what once was the area of the ancient Tepidarum, was designed by Michelangelo between 1563-66 by the will of Pope Pius IV, and noted for its eight colossal monolithic columns in red granite, is also housed in this ancient structure.
Other remains of the Diocletian baths can still be see in and throughout the area.