Maddalena Bassani, 2025. Adriatico salutifero. Archeologia del termalismo al Fons Timavi e al Fons Aponi, Series AΔΡΙΑΣ 11, Rome/Bristol: L’Erma di Bretschneider.

Mineral water, especially when bubbling and steaming, has always captured the attention of ancient peoples. Over time, they learned to harness these waters, and they classified them based on empirical and organoleptic criteria. They used them to treat both humans and domestic animals, as well as for non-therapeutic purposes related to economic activities. Through an unpublished and previously unknown 18th-century manuscript preserved in the Padua Civic Library, this volume offers a new perspective on ancient sources and archaeological artifacts pertaining to the two main therapeutic springs of the northern Adriatic: the Fons Timavi and the Fons Aponi, located today in the Monfalcone area, near Aquileia, and the Euganean area, at the sites of Montegrotto and Abano Terme. The scope of the study, which also includes other Mediterranean contexts, allows us to assess how thermomineral springs influenced ancient societies, particularly in the development of myths and cults within a spatio-temporal framework that encompasses both practical and imagined dimensions.

Maddalena Bassani is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Università Iuav di Venezia, and the Director of the Laboratory for Analysis of Ancient Materials (LAMA-Iuav). Her research focuses on domestic architecture and private religion in the Roman world (as explored in the monographs Sacraria: Ambienti e piccoli edifici per il culto in area vesuviana, 2008; Sacra privata nell’Italia centrale, 2017), as well as the Venetian lagoon area through archaeological and archival investigations (Antichità lagunari. Scavi archeologici e scavi archivistici, 2012). For several years, she has been studying ancient thermalism as a therapeutic resource and as a cultural interface between humans and nature. She developed this line of research through international collaborations (which resulted in volumes such as Rethinking the Concept of Healing Waters, 2019, and Archaeology of Thermalism: New Studies on Healing Waters, 2024).