An Afternoon at the Baths

The Roman bath has come down to us as a symbol of cleanliness. The reality, read from the ruins of Pompeii and the curse tablets of Bath, is murkier — the same warm water, used by hundreds through the day and changed only rarely.

A long, unhurried sleep documentary that walks the hours of a single afternoon at a Roman public bath — from the fire lit before dawn to the water gone still at dusk. Calmly, and without sensationalism, it sits in the gap between the gleaming marble we inherited and what the record actually shows: water you would not step into, oil and sweat scraped from the skin with a curved blade, the unnamed people who kept the furnaces below the floor, and the small, strange, human truth behind one of history’s most flattering images. Narrated low and slow, made to fall asleep to.