Afterlife

Baths of Caracalla today

After the Baths of Caracalla were abandoned, over time many of its decorative elements were taken, either to be melted and reused, or as spolia and to decorate another building. The baths spent part of their afterlife as land used for cultivation in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.¹ One of the earliest instances of spolia was in the 12^th century for use in the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere.² Eight capitals on the two column rows of the church are from the Baths of Caracalla. It is possible four of the column bases were also taken from the baths. They were taken around 1140 by Pope Innocent II, most likely from the libraries in the outer structure of the baths.

Then, in the mid-1500s the Pope Paul III excavated the baths hoping to find ancient statues to decorate the Farnese Palace.³ This resulted in the discovery of many large sculptures that are famous today, like the Farnese Herakles. Since then, there have been several excavations and restoration missions in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. However, spolia were still being taken from the baths during the early 19^th century, like when some mosaics of athletes were discovered in 1824 and taken to decorate the Lateran Palace.⁴

However, since 1937, the baths have housed opera performances and other events during summer evenings.⁵ Earlier events at the baths did not treat the ruins well: one even had an elephant on the property. Thankfully, modern day performances are more respectful of the ruins.

JMS

¹Miranda Marvin, "Freestanding Sculptures from the Baths of Caracalla," American Journal of Archaeology 87, no. 3 (1983) 350.

²Dale Kinney, "Spolia from the Baths of Caracalla in Sta. Maria in Trastevere," The Art Bulletin 68, no. 3 (1986): 379.

³Miranda Marvin, "Freestanding Sculptures from the Baths of Caracalla," American Journal of Archaeology 87, no. 3 (1983) 349.

⁴Phyllis Williams Lehmann, "A Roman Source for Klee's Athlete's Head," The Art Bulletin 72, no. 4 (1990) 639.

⁵Jason Horowitz, "Opera in Rome Returns To Old Stomping Ground," The New York Times, 2003. Accessed December 18, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/arts/opera-in-rome-returns-to-old-stomping-ground.html.