A nineteenth-century municipal bathhouse, returned to luxury — twenty-two suites, a hammam, and a vaulted swimming hall, beneath two thousand square metres of original hydraulic tile.
Fig. 1 — Facade, Via San Marco. Photographed 1897 by G. Sommer.
Commissioned in 1889 by the Municipal Board of Hygiene and inaugurated on the feast of Saint Ambrose, the Bagni del Carmine served thirty-six thousand bathers in its first year alone. Architect Cesare Beruto conceived the structure as a "Roman thermae in miniature" — three vaulted halls disposed around a central rotunda, paved entirely in hydraulic tile.
By 1923 the boilers were exhausted; by 1958 the building was a warehouse for municipal records. Three generations of soot settled over the tessellated floors. In 2019 the city granted concession to restore it — not as a museum, but as a working house of water once again.
Fig. 2 — Section, Beruto 1889
"Che ogni cittadino, dal magistrato all'operaio, trovi qui l'acqua calda, la luce, e la dignità della pietra."— C. Beruto, Arch.
The architect's own apartment, beneath the rotunda dome. Original encaustic mosaic, vaulted ceiling, claw-foot copper bath.
A double aspect chamber over the former women's pool. Restored Boccacci tile pattern N° 47, copper plumbing exposed.
Our compact chamber. Reclaimed terracotta tessellation, single sash window overlooking the bell tower.
Three halls open daily to residents · day passes available by appointment.
Three chambers — tepidarium, caldarium, frigidarium — beneath a marble cupola pierced with one hundred and twelve glass oculi. Single sessions and full ritual programmes.
28-metre vaulted swimming hall · 32°C, lit by skylight
Eight hundred and forty-two thousand individual tesserae were catalogued, lifted, cleaned, and re-laid by a team of seventeen artisans from the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli.
Open to residents and day-guests from the 1st of September, 2025. Our concierge replies within twelve hours, in five languages.
