The Roman baths had a succession of rooms for the care and well-being of the body.
Once past the entrance atrium, you could access the changing rooms, the apodyteria, which sometimes had stone benches leaning against the walls.
In the late antiquity residence of the Villa del Casale, different rooms used for changing clothes precede the thermal baths path: a preferential entrance reserved for the villa owners, that could also be used as a changing room, in the area before the public baths, and four semicircular niches located inside the frigidarium where visitors could undress.
Usually, in the Roman baths, clothes, money and jewellery remained unattended and were easy prey for pickpockets, the fures balnearii. Because of these unpleasant raids, the changing rooms were guarded by the capsarii, who were given a quadrant, a Roman bronze coin of little value.
Through the still legible representations of the floor mosaics, the Apodyteria of the late antiquity villa in Piazza Armerina depict various stages of undress, with important people surrounded by servants.
