Rome - Baths of Diocletian

(Local Name: Terme di Diocleziano) Diocletian built these baths to serve the northern districts of the city, the southern districts having been catered for by the Baths of Caracalla. (For the functions of Roman baths, see Terme di Caracalla.) The Baths of Diocletian, measuring 356m/1,170ft by 316m/1,035ft, were even larger than those of Caracalla. Their huge scale can be appreciated when it is seen how widely separated from one another are the surviving parts of the structure, many of them now incorporated into later buildings - the Museo Nazionale Romano or Museo delle Terme (National Museum, Baths Museum), with a collection of Greek and Roman art; the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built by Michelangelo, the round church of San Bernardo; the Planetarium; the Piazza dell'Esedra, in an exedra of the Baths; and the cloister and other structures belonging to a Carthusian monastery. The baths could no longer be used after the Acqua Marcia was cut in A.D. 536, and thereafter the buildings fell into decay.