51�Թ�

Finally, they would enter the largest and most spectacular room of all - the frigidarium, or cold room.

Shadow-travel left her groggy and nauseous, as if she’d been dragged from the cold waters of the frigidarium into the sauna at a Roman bathhouse.

The work might have been based on images from actual archaeological excavations, but its decorously bathing nudes speak more to 19th-century preoccupations with hygiene – Roger Fry compared his work to "highly scented soap" – and the marble architecture is as much grand London bank as Roman frigidarium.

Antiquaries have amused themselves by identifying different chambers, to which, with considerable uncertainty, the names of Calidarium, Laconicum, Tepidarium, Frigidarium, &c., have been affixed.

At the door of the Frigidarium or cool room, the would-be bather loosens the latchets of his shoes, and leaves them behind the lintel; the portal opens and he enters.