The bathing chamber in the castle of Novo Brdo

Abstract

A recent archaeological excavation of the Castle of the town of Novo Brdo has discovered residential buildings from the second quarter of the 14th century as well as the remains of a subsequently built bath, dated to the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century. Built on a small area, the bath consisted of a single bathing chamber above a hypocaust, a water reservoir and a furnace. Since there were no natural springs or groundwater wells, it was supplied with water from cisterns. The bathing chamber, originally domed, was not furnished with a masonry water basin. It was heated by an under floor hypocaust system and by steam conveyed by pipes from are servoir of boiling water. The only known analogies for this small structure, presently the only such discovered in medieval Serbia and its neighborhood, are bathing chambers in residential complexes in the region of Amalfi, southern Italy.

Keywords

• bathing chamber
• shallow dome
• Castle
• Novo Brdo
• Amalfi