​Specialized Bath Databases and Networks

• BATH – BAlnea & THermae (ancientbaths.com) The leading modern scholarly network for the study of ancient baths. Features a glossary of technical terms, lists of additional resources, and an ongoing comprehensive database of Roman (and eventually Greek and Islamic) bath buildings. The database is built on the OCHRE platform and is currently under construction, with data entry focused first on certain regions.

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• BATHS Database (Arleta Kowalewska / University of Chicago OCHRE) Freely accessible online database of Roman to Early Islamic bathhouses in Iudaea/Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia (modern Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and southern Syria). Includes searchable entries, plans, photos, maps, and chronological data from the mid-1st century BCE to the mid-8th century CE. Companion to Kowalewska’s 2021 monograph.

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• Healing Spas in Antiquity project portal. Focuses on thermomineral (natural hot-spring) baths across the Roman world. Includes news, events, and plans for a dedicated database of these specialized sites.

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• Balnéorient project blog and resources. Collaborative French project (ANR-funded) on baths in the Near East, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula from antiquity to modern times. Excellent for preliminary reports, new publications, and regional updates.

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Digital Reconstructions and 3D Resources

• High-quality laser scans and models of the Suburban Baths at Herculaneum (Parco archeologico di Ercolano / Herculaneum Conservation Project).

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• Various 3D reconstructions and virtual models of major complexes, including the Baths of Caracalla, Baths of Diocletian, Stabian Baths (Pompeii), and provincial examples (e.g., Apulum in Dacia, Massaciuccoli in Italy, Edeta/Llíria in Spain). Many are available on Sketchfab, project websites, or academic repositories.

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• Photogrammetry and laser-scanning documentation projects for individual sites (frequently published in open-access journals such as Archeologia e Calcolatori).

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Project and Excavation Websites

• Stabian Baths Project (Freie Universität Berlin/collaborators) — Ongoing excavation reports, preliminary results, and methodological updates available online (many as downloadable PDFs).

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• Official archaeological park websites (Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia, Bath/Aquae Sulis, etc.) with site plans, visitor information, and sometimes digital content on the baths.

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• Fasti Online — Searchable database of excavation reports from across the Mediterranean, useful for locating recent fieldwork on baths.

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Supporting Digital Tools

• Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire, Pleiades, and related gazetteers for locating sites.

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• Orbis (Stanford) — Interactive model of travel times and costs in the Roman world (helps contextualize the distribution of baths).

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• Wikipedia’s “List of Roman public baths” (useful as a quick starting overview, though not a scholarly primary source).

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Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire, Pleiades, and Related Gazetteers

These tools are essential modern resources for locating ancient sites, including Roman baths and thermal complexes. They provide accurate geographic coordinates, historical names, chronological information, and links to further scholarship.

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Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire (DARE)

• Creator: Johan Åhlfeldt (originally at Lund University; now maintained at the Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Gothenburg).

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• Current access: https://dh.gu.se/dare/ or https://imperium.ahlfeldt.se/.

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• What it offers: An interactive, zoomable map of the Roman Empire showing settlements, roads, provinces, fortifications, and other features. It draws heavily on the Barrington Atlas and Pleiades data but aims for higher spatial accuracy. Users can search places, toggle layers, and explore the landscape in both ancient and modern contexts. Map tiles are available under Creative Commons licensing for use in GIS software (e.g., QGIS).

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• Use for baths research: Excellent for visualizing the distribution of sites that contained public or private baths and for understanding their geographic and road-network context.

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Pleiades

• Access: https://pleiades.stoa.org/.

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• What it is: A community-built, open-access gazetteer and graph of ancient places. It currently documents more than 40,000 place resources covering the Greek and Roman world (and expanding beyond). Each entry typically includes:

  • Ancient and modern names

  • Precise or approximate coordinates

  • Chronological ranges of occupation

  • Feature types (settlement, fort, sanctuary, etc.)

  • Bibliographic references

  • Connections to related places

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• Data access: Fully searchable online; bulk downloads available in multiple formats (CSV, JSON, GeoJSON, etc.) for research and mapping. Content is published under open licenses and is widely reused by other digital projects.

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• Use for baths research: Search by ancient or modern name (e.g., “Pompeii,” “Lepcis Magna,” “Aquae Sulis,” “Fregellae”) to obtain reliable coordinates and further references. Many bath sites are linked through the places that contained them.

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ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World

ORBIS is an interactive online tool developed at Stanford University that models realistic travel times and financial costs across the Roman Empire. It was created primarily by historian Walter Scheidel and digital humanities specialist Elijah Meeks, with contributions from a team that included web developers and GIS specialists. The project launched around 2012 (with a major upgrade in 2014) and remains freely accessible.

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What It Does

ORBIS simulates movement through the mature Roman transportation network as it existed around 200 CE (with some Late Antique additions). Instead of treating the empire as a flat map measured only in distance, it calculates the actual time and expense of travel by combining:

• The principal road network (~85,000 km of roads and desert tracks)

• Navigable rivers and canals (~28,000 km)

• Major sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea, and coastal Atlantic

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Users can select any two of the roughly 630–750 sites in the model and adjust variables such as:

• Season of the year (which affects winds, currents, and road conditions)

• Mode of transport (walking, ox-cart, mule, carriage, different types of river boats or sailing ships, etc.)

• Priority (fastest route, cheapest route, or shortest distance)

• Transfer costs when changing between land, river, and sea

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The model returns estimated duration in days and relative financial cost, revealing how expensive or time-consuming journeys actually were.

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Why It Matters for the Study of Ancient Baths

Roman baths were expensive to build, fuel, and maintain, and their distribution reflected economic and logistical realities. ORBIS helps researchers:

• Understand connectivity between major urban centers that possessed large public thermae

• Estimate the time and cost of transporting materials, fuel (especially wood), or skilled labor

• Contextualize how easily people could travel between cities for business, administration, or leisure that included bathing

• Visualize the “true shape” of the Roman world in terms of cost rather than pure distance (sea travel was dramatically cheaper than overland transport)

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For example, one can quickly compare the relative difficulty of reaching a major bath complex in North Africa versus one in Britain or the eastern provinces.

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Access

The tool is free and available at: https://orbis.stanford.edu/

It includes a tutorial, explanations of the underlying data and methodology, and visualizations such as distance cartograms that reshape the map according to time or cost from a chosen center (e.g., Rome or Constantinople).

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ORBIS remains one of the most influential digital humanities projects for Roman history and is frequently cited in studies of connectivity, economy, and infrastructure.