Large part of Roman bathhouse found intact during excavations in Nijmegen
Archeologists uncovered a large part of a Roman bathhouse during excavations for housing development in the Waalfront area in Nijmegen. It is the largest batthouse complex from the Roman era ever found in the Netherlands, the municipality announced. Researchers also found adjacent blocks of homes with streets in between, along with tens of thousands of historical objects.
According to the municipality, the finds show that people lived in luxury in the Roman city of Ulpia Noviomagus some 1,900 years ago. The finds included jewelry, coins, a bronze bust of the Roman wine god Bacchus, and hundreds of bone hairpins “used in the elaborate hairstyles of Roman ladies.”
The bathhouse was built with expensive materials, giving the complex a “luxurious” vibe. “The interior walls of the baths were clad in marble, and the floors consisted of black and white limestone tiles. In other rooms, the walls featured colorfully painted plasterwork. Decorative moldings of limestone and sandstone were incorporated into the facades,” the municipality said.
The batthouse was well preserved, with large sections of the drainage channels and floors still intact, including a concrete floor topped with brick pillars of a hypcaustum, a Roman underfloor heating system. Two stone foundations, standing up to 2 meters tall, also survived. “These are among the best-preserved Roman masonry in Nijmegen,” the municipality said.
The excavations make it clear that this Roman city was in full use well into the third century AD. “This applies to both the bathhouse and the buildings to the north of it, on the river side,” the municipality said. “In particular, the many coins of Emperor Postumus (260-269 AD), and his immediate predecessors and successors, bear witness to this. Coins from this period have hardly been found in the rest of the Roman city.”
The municipality has decided to keep the ancient walls in place and plans to make them visible beneath the new construction. Some of the new finds will be on display in the Nijmegen City Hall from Monday, June 29.
