Baths of Caracalla

This past Sunday, I invited friends to join me at the Baths of Caracalla.  These are the remains of an ancient roman public bath complex.  The structure is huge, larger than any photo could demonstrate to you.  You really have to stand there and see these huge walls and pilasters, but even they are just a part of what the whole structure once was.  It once had a gigantic dome that dwarfed the Pantheon.  Now, just the lower structures are left standing.  In some parts, the mosaic floor is perfectly preserved.  Chunks of floor depict black and white mosaics of fish, gods, and sea monsters.


I was thinking as I was looking at these ruins, that there must have been a very first day that a huge chunk of the dome fell down.  When the Roman Empire collapsed, these huge structures including the Colosseum and the Roman Forum were simply no longer maintained.  They became abandoned buildings, like any abandoned hotel or warehouse in North Philadelphia.  They were open to vandals, kids, shepherds, and climbers.  And one day, a huge chunk of this great massive dome must have fallen.  Perhaps half the dome fell all at one from stress and fracturing, or maybe the majority of it.  Maybe someone was nearby when it happened.  I imagine that there was a time when older citizens remembered when the baths were used, but the younger generation did not have any memory of this.  Because these structures were not maintained, the debris of time such as dirt and leaves collected in them and built up.  Slowly, the ground level rose around these structures and buried them.  The current ruins of the Roman Forum were once a level sheep and cow pasture.  Now, these structures have been excavated from the ground that rose around them like water, and people pay euros to see them.


These are some photos of inside the Baths of Caracalla.  I am also including pictures of the five drawings I did there.  These are portraits of my friends in the space.  For my drawing assignment, we were to try to improve our drawings by drawing something multiple times.  When I attempted to recreate these drawings in the studio but with improved compositions, they didn't turn out well at all.  Being on site is so key to getting the nuanced feeling of a place, and to having engaging, sensitive marks.

The above photo is just a side part to the bath complex.  The Central Dome area is way larger.

We found this door when we walked to a park with orange trees.

Kelsey, Luca, and Allison, drawing

Sam

Luca

Allison

Two Rocks