Museo Nazionale Romano - Terme di Diocleziano, Rome

Museo Nazionale Romano – Terme di Diocleziano occupies surviving halls of an ancient bathing complex, and the museum has been based here since the Italian state established it in the baths and former charterhouse in eighteen eighty-nine. These baths were built between the year two hundred and ninety-eight and the year three hundred and six, bearing the name of Emperor Diocletian. Maximian initiated the undertaking after returning to Rome from Africa, and construction continued under Constantius after both emperors stepped down.

This was the grandest imperial bath complex in ancient Rome. Let the immense masonry suggest a public building on an extraordinary scale: the enclosure covered thirteen hectares, while the bathing block itself extended along a carefully arranged sequence of cold, warm, and hot rooms. Water arrived through the Aqua Marcia, whose supply Diocletian enlarged for this vast demand.

The baths ceased to function when the Ostrogoths severed Rome’s aqueducts during the siege of the city in five hundred and thirty-seven. Centuries later, Michelangelo adapted parts of the cold and warm bathing halls for Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, making these ruins part of Rome’s continuing life.