Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
People found a very old Roman bath in the Netherlands. It is the biggest one ever found there. The bath is in a city called Nijmegen.
The Romans built the bath about 2,000 years ago. It was a big place where people could wash and relax. It covered an area as big as many houses.
Workers found many old things near the bath. They found coins, jewelry, and a small statue. These things help us learn about how Romans lived.
- bath
- a place where people wash their bodies
- Roman
- relating to the people who built the Roman Empire more than 2,000 years ago
- ancient
- very old, from a long time in the past
- Netherlands
- a country in northwestern Europe
- statue
- a figure of a person or animal made from stone, metal, or other materials
- jewelry
- decorative items such as rings, necklaces, and earrings worn on the body
- coin
- a small round piece of metal used as money
- excavation
- the process of digging in the ground to find old objects or buildings
Level 2 — Elementary
Archaeologists have found the largest Roman bath ever discovered in the Netherlands. The ruins are in the city of Nijmegen, which was an important Roman city called Ulpia Noviomagus about 2,000 years ago.
The bath complex covers 4,900 square meters, nearly twice the size of the previous largest Roman bath found in the country. Teams from two research groups, RAAP and BAAC, carried out the excavations in the Waalfront district of the city.
Tens of thousands of artifacts were found at the site. These include a small bronze statue of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, signet rings, gold jewelry, bone hairpins, and Roman coins. The site dates to the second and third centuries CE.
- archaeologist
- a scientist who studies the past by digging up and examining old objects
- ruins
- the remains of old buildings that have fallen apart over time
- artifact
- an object made by humans in the past, now preserved for study
- complex
- a group of buildings with a related purpose, used together
- bronze
- a brown metal made by mixing copper and tin
- signet ring
- a ring with a carved design used in ancient times to stamp a personal seal
- century
- a period of one hundred years
- district
- a defined area within a larger city or region
Level 3 — Intermediate
Dutch archaeologists have unearthed the largest Roman bathing complex ever found in the Netherlands, buried beneath the Waalfront district of Nijmegen. The site covers 4,900 square meters, significantly larger than the previous record-holders: the 2,500 square meter complex at Heerlen, ancient Coriovallum, and the 2,200 square meter facility at Voorburg, ancient Forum Hadriani.
Nijmegen, known to the Romans as Ulpia Noviomagus, served as the capital of the Roman province of Germania Inferior during the second and third centuries CE. The city's importance is reflected in the scale of the bath complex, which would have served both military garrisons and civilian residents. Excavations were conducted by specialist firms RAAP and BAAC.
Among the tens of thousands of artifacts recovered were a bronze bust of Bacchus that was later reused as a weighing scale, gold jewelry including a necklace with a gold clasp, signet rings, bone hairpins, and numerous Roman coins. The repurposing of the Bacchus bust suggests the site remained inhabited long after the baths fell out of use.
- unearthed
- dug up from the ground; discovered by excavation
- garrison
- a body of troops stationed in a fortified place
- civilian
- a person who is not a member of the military
- repurpose
- to use something for a different function than originally intended
- bust
- a sculpture of a person's head, neck, and shoulders
- clasp
- a fastening device for holding things together
- province
- a district or region within a larger country or empire
- record-holder
- the object or place that holds the best or largest known example of something
Level 4 — Advanced
The discovery of a 4,900 square meter Roman bath complex beneath Nijmegen's Waalfront district redraws the map of Roman-era infrastructure in the northern provinces. Surpassing the Coriovallum complex at Heerlen (2,500 square meters) and Forum Hadriani at Voorburg (2,200 square meters) by a substantial margin, the Nijmegen thermae reflect the city's status as Ulpia Noviomagus, capital of the strategically vital province of Germania Inferior in the second and third centuries CE.
The artifact assemblage, encompassing tens of thousands of objects retrieved by excavation firms RAAP and BAAC, speaks to both the cosmopolitan character of the site and the long temporal arc of its occupation. The bronze Bacchus bust, repurposed at some point as a counterweight in a weighing scale, exemplifies the material pragmatism that often characterized post-Roman reuse of classical objects. Additional finds, including a gold-clasp necklace, signet rings, and bone hairpins, suggest that the complex served a socially stratified clientele spanning military officers, merchants, and aristocratic families.
The scale of the discovery carries implications for our understanding of Roman urbanism at the edges of the empire. Thermae of this magnitude required substantial public investment, sophisticated hydraulic engineering, and reliable fuel supplies for hypocaust underfloor heating systems. Their presence in Nijmegen confirms that even frontier capitals received the full urban amenity package of the Roman world, challenging earlier assumptions that large-scale bathing culture was concentrated primarily in Mediterranean core provinces.
- thermae
- large public baths in the Roman Empire, often featuring multiple rooms and social facilities
- assemblage
- a collection of objects found together in an archaeological context
- temporal arc
- the span of time over which a site or object was in use
- counterweight
- a heavy object used to balance something on a scale or mechanism
- stratified
- arranged in layers or social classes, one above another
- urbanism
- the study of city development and the characteristics of urban life
- hypocaust
- an ancient Roman underfloor heating system using hot air channels beneath the floor
- frontier
- the boundary area at the edge of a settled or governed territory
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