Bagni di Cefalà Diana

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Bagni di Cefalà Diana, interior view
Bagni di Cefalà Diana, floor plan

Bagni di Cefalà Diana is a former thermal bath in Sicily . It is located in an estate approx. 2 km north-northeast of the municipality of Cefalà Diana in the metropolitan city of Palermo .

The outer

Seen from the outside, the building has the shape of a simple cube with unstructured walls. Only a band of limestone blocks halfway up divides the facade. The Kufi inscription on this tape is badly weathered and no longer legible.

The inner

The interior consists of a single large room, which is covered by a slightly pointed arched vault. The room is divided into two unequal areas by a triple pointed arch that rests on two columns with Corinthian capitals. There are three window openings in the wall above the pointed arches.

In the larger of the two areas, three basins are set into the floor next to each other and separated by partition walls, the smaller area contains only one basin. Some of the lines for filling and emptying the basins can still be seen. The pools were fed by hot and cold springs located nearby. The headwaters today belong to the Riserva naturale orientata Bagni di Cefalà Diana e Chiarastella .

history

Roman remains are built into the wall of the bath, so that there was probably a thermal bath here as early as ancient times . It is not clear whether there was a bathhouse at this point during the time of the Arab domination in Sicily or whether it was only built under the Normans .

According to an earlier date, some of the walls date from Roman times, the columns from the Arab era and the band with the Kufi inscription from the Norman era. However, since al-Idrisi does not mention the facility in the list of thermal baths in his book Rogers and the architecture is similar to the architectural style under Wilhelm II , it is assumed that the building was only built in the late period of the Norman rule .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ D. Ryolo: I Bagni di Cefalà . In: Sicilia Archeologica . tape IV , no. 15 , 1971, p. 19-32 .
  2. ^ G. di Stefano: Monumenti della Sicilia Normanna . Ed .: W. Krönig. Palermo 1979.

literature

  • Museum Without Borders (Ed.): Arab-Norman Art - Sicily's Culture in the Middle Ages . International cycle of exhibition streets Islamic Art in the Mediterranean, Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen Berlin, 2004, ISBN 3803041023

Coordinates: 37 ° 55 ′ 49.3 "  N , 13 ° 28 ′ 20.9"  E