The Baths of Diocletian in Rome are the largest baths of the ancient world.

Historical seat of the National Roman Museum, about a century after its establishment in the Baths of Diocletian, the Museum was reorganized into four distinct locations: in addition to the Baths, Palazzo Massimo, Palazzo Altemps, and the Crypta Balbi were added.

The Baths of Diocletian were built in just eight years, between 298 and 306 AD, in the area between the Viminal and Quirinal hills and covered an area of over 13 hectares. They were delimited by a large enclosure and a large exedra with steps, corresponding to today's Piazza della Repubblica. After almost a thousand years of abandonment, in 1561 Pope Pius IV decided to build a basilica with a Carthusian monastery dedicated to the Madonna of the Angels inside the Baths. The project was entrusted to Michelangelo who, respecting the ancient building, used the frigidarium and tepidarium without altering their characteristics and designed the Great Cloister.

Room VIII houses some of the grand architectural fragments of the Baths. Through a facade marked by pillars and columns, the room overlooked the natatio of which part of the monumental facade is now visible, designed in the style of theater scenes, covered in colored marbles and mosaics that created extraordinary polychrome effects.

Room X was one of the entrances to the central body of the Baths: here is exhibited the so-called Platorini tomb. It is important to remember that the Museum of the Baths of Diocletian has collected the findings from Rome and its outskirts. For this reason, two chamber tombs carved inside a large tufa nucleus are also exhibited.

Room XI was used to store the water of the thermal complex. Currently, a large black and white mosaic is exhibited there. In the center, between elegant volutes, Hercules is represented victoriously holding the horn just torn from the bleeding head of the river god Achelous.

The Octagonal Room is part of the central complex of the Baths of Diocletian and is the last of the four rooms that stood next to the caldarium. The room was first transformed into a cinema (Minerva Hall) and then into the Planetarium (1928), at that time the largest in Europe. Only in 1991 was the building destined for the exhibition of sculptures from thermal buildings.

Among the statues from the Baths of Diocletian, the copy of the Aphrodite of Cnidus by Praxiteles must be mentioned. From the Baths of Caracalla come two copies from Polykleitos and a beautiful statue of Aphrodite, depicted while squeezing her wet hair.

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