The **Baths of Maxentius** were part of the building program of Emperor Maxentius in the early 4th century along the Via Appia. They followed the standard structure of Roman baths—frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium and pools—but on a smaller, more private scale than the large imperial complexes of earlier centuries. The **Domus Severiana**, on the southeastern edge of the Palatine Hill, was built in the early 3rd century under the Severan dynasty as an extension of the imperial palace. It included terraced halls, garden platforms and its own bath facilities, serving both official and residential functions for the Severan emperors. Roman bath culture combined bathing with exercise, socialising and leisure; water came through aqueducts, and hypocaust systems provided heating. After the fall of the empire, these structures gradually lost their function: parts became fortifications, storage spaces or sources of building stone in the Middle Ages, and later merged into gardens and farmland. Their names derive from Emperor Maxentius and the Severan dynasty.
Rome rises on seven hills, and this walk takes us across two of its most revealing ones — Esquiline and Palatine. The Esquiline, once the city’s eastern edge, still carries traces of imperial gardens, hidden nymphaea, magical gates, and traditions that survived the fall of the empire. The Palatine, the hill of the emperors, preserves stadiums, palaces, terraces and views where the entire history of Rome — Republic, Empire, Middle Ages, Baroque and modern Italy — lies in a single panorama. Along the way, we meet the monuments, streets and layers we uncovered in this journey: the baths of Trajan, the Domus Aurea beneath the grass, the Palatine stadium, the Forum’s arches and temples, and the buildings that reshaped Rome across two millennia. And we pause for something timeless: a pastry shop on the Esquiline that has kept its flavours unchanged for more than a century — a taste of Rome as constant as its stones.
