This was our last view of Montalcino as we headed off in the general direction of Florence.
But on the way we stopped off at an interesting spot - Bagni Vagnoni: the Roman Baths.
The Romans were big into bathing so they were heavy consumers of water, and always on the lookout for natural springs to supply their settlements.
The particular spring that flows vigourously from this particular Tuscan hill top is rich, hot mineral water. It has been used to provide public thermal baths since Roman times and is still going strong - although these days access is restricted to paying patrons unless you are good at rock climbing.
This is the beautiful historical bath that for some strange reason has had a platform built in the middle and these ugly floating balls let loose on top. Typically Italian if you ask me - bad taste is only just below the surface. I cannot understand why they they think this is attractive. Ooooh, Viv's in a mean mood!
Anyway, you can see the spring still spurting strongly from the ground underneath the bath.
This was the very nice sign for the bath and its associated loggia called St Catherines porch, which provided seating and shade for those originlly come for the healing waters. This is a UNESCO site. But in typical Italian fashion, there is no further information provided. That's it! I suspect they've stolen the UNESCO money to build a new swimming pool at the luxury hotel where you now have to pay if you want to bath in the highly chemicalised waters. Oooohh! Viv's in an extremely mean mood!
Just a few hundred metres across the top of this stony mountain is another area that the Romans exploited. This is where the thermal spring naturally trickled over the rocky edge of the mountain. Once the main bath was constructed over the spring itself, the overflow from the bath was allowed to continue to trickle down its original course over the top of this stony mountain top - but with a few Roman modifications.
The Romans actually sculpted narrow channels out of the rock of the mountain to move the water to additional pools before they finally allowed it to run off the mountain top to the river in the valley below. The photo above shows only two of dozens of channels, about 40cm wide, carved into the rock, that moved the highly mineralised waters to hot baths and swimming pools.
These were a series of baths fed by the channels in the rock. Over the years the mineral build up is obvious. But in Roman times the hot water would have filled the four pools and been used for bathing rituals. Water is no longer allowed to pool in these baths although it still trickles through. One suspects that most water still bubbling from the natural spring, is now diverted to the luxury hotel on the site. User pays.
This photo shows a bit more perspective of how these chambers were built and how large they are - but again, it's a UNESCO site but there is no information anywhere.
In addition, the Romans created two huge swimming pools in the mountain rock. This mountain is apparently made of travertine marble and the Romans dug these two huge holes, one slightly higher than the other, into which they channeled the warm mineralised waters.
Great to look at and fascinating, but it would have been nice to have a bit of information.
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