Description
The Terme della Rotonda are a Roman bath complex a few steps from Catania's Ancient Theater. On their ruins, at the end of the 6th century, a church with a great dome arose, Santa Maria della Rotonda, which keeps medieval and Baroque frescoes.
The heart of the monument is the church's circular hall, 11 meters across and covered by a round dome, enclosed within a square building. Around it, large arches open onto niches and exedras used as chapels.
In the presbytery the precious medieval frescoes survive: a 12th-century saint, probably Saint Nicholas, and Saint Leo the Wonderworker, bishop of Catania, from the 13th century, with his name written in Greek. In the pendentives of the dome, Saints Peter, Paul, Agatha, Lucy, and the Evangelists were painted in the 18th century.
Around the church you can see the remains of the baths, built between the 1st and 2nd centuries and enlarged in the 3rd: a large apsed hall, perhaps the cold room, and a hot room with suspensurae, the little pillars that held up the floor heated from below.
The two doorways tell the church's ages: the west one, Gothic, in lava stone, is from the 13th century; the south one, in limestone, from the 16th. To the north, excavations have uncovered the castellum aquae, the cistern connected to the Roman aqueduct, and the entrance courtyard of the baths.
For centuries the people of Catania called it the Pantheon. Many scholars believed it was a pagan temple dedicated to all the gods and even that its dome had served as the model for the famous Pantheon in Rome. The Prince of Biscari, in the 18th century, was the first to recognize it as baths.
Another belief held that it was the city's oldest Christian church, consecrated to the Virgin as early as AD 44. In fact the church was founded at the end of the 6th century, in the Byzantine era: it is one of the very few traces of Byzantine Catania.
The bombings of 1943 damaged the Rotonda. The restoration that followed, meant to bring out the Roman walls, sadly destroyed a good part of the frescoes; others have reappeared in more recent excavations, under a layer of plaster.
The heart of the monument is the church's circular hall, 11 meters across and covered by a round dome, enclosed within a square building. Around it, large arches open onto niches and exedras used as chapels.
In the presbytery the precious medieval frescoes survive: a 12th-century saint, probably Saint Nicholas, and Saint Leo the Wonderworker, bishop of Catania, from the 13th century, with his name written in Greek. In the pendentives of the dome, Saints Peter, Paul, Agatha, Lucy, and the Evangelists were painted in the 18th century.
Around the church you can see the remains of the baths, built between the 1st and 2nd centuries and enlarged in the 3rd: a large apsed hall, perhaps the cold room, and a hot room with suspensurae, the little pillars that held up the floor heated from below.
The two doorways tell the church's ages: the west one, Gothic, in lava stone, is from the 13th century; the south one, in limestone, from the 16th. To the north, excavations have uncovered the castellum aquae, the cistern connected to the Roman aqueduct, and the entrance courtyard of the baths.
For centuries the people of Catania called it the Pantheon. Many scholars believed it was a pagan temple dedicated to all the gods and even that its dome had served as the model for the famous Pantheon in Rome. The Prince of Biscari, in the 18th century, was the first to recognize it as baths.
Another belief held that it was the city's oldest Christian church, consecrated to the Virgin as early as AD 44. In fact the church was founded at the end of the 6th century, in the Byzantine era: it is one of the very few traces of Byzantine Catania.
The bombings of 1943 damaged the Rotonda. The restoration that followed, meant to bring out the Roman walls, sadly destroyed a good part of the frescoes; others have reappeared in more recent excavations, under a layer of plaster.