Roman baths

Hisarya is a year-round resort thanks to its climate, mineral springs and archeological sites, which are very well preserved. Here you can see the best preserved fortress wall in Europe and Roman baths, where mineral water is still flowing through the ancient water supply system.

Originally an Ancient Thracian settlement and then a Roman town called Augusta, the Antiquity predecessor of Bulgaria’s Hisarya was granted the status of a city in the Roman Empire in 293 AD under Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305 AD) who renamed it after himself, Diocletianopolis.

Diocletianopolis had a total of four public baths in the Late Roman Era, the largest and best researches ones being the main thermae in Hisarya’s downtown.

The newly found dry room, i.e. the apodyterium, or “changing room"" of the central public baths of the Roman city of Diocletianopolis has been discovered during regular archaeological excavations.

The newly discovered Roman thermae changing room (apodyterium) in Bulgaria’s Hisarya is described as “huge"", with an area of more than 110 square meters: it is a rectangle with a length of 11.8 meters and width of 10.2 meters, and could fit dozens of visitors at a time, lead archaeologist Assoc. Prof. Mitko Madzharov, has told the Maritsa daily.

The walls of the apodyterium of the main Roman public baths in ancient Diocletianopolis were fully or partly plastered with marble, and the floor was also paved with marble.

The large windows of the ancient changing room also had marble frames, which were attached to the walls with iron pins.

The ancient baths here have sewage system and swimming pools in operation and are among the three best preserved similar landmarks in the world as the others are Bath, England and Timgad, Algeria. During archaeological works in Hisarya, marble ritual tiles dedicated to the three nymphs, patrons of the healing springs, were found, suggesting that even before the baths were built in the mid-2nd century, a sanctuary to the nymphs existed here.