Pl.: tepidaria

A tepid room in a Roman-style bathhouse. It could have different shapes and was located between the frigidarium and the caldarium,or between the frigidarium and the sudatorium. In this room, the bathers acclimatised to the heat before entering the hot rooms. Early tepidaria were heated with charcoal braziers, but from the Imperial period onwards, they were heated by a hypocaust. Sometimes the tepidarium had no wall heating, in an effort to maintain a lower temperature than in the caldarium. For the same reason, it was often indirectly heated by the furnace of the sudatorium or the caldarium. From the 2^nd century onwards, the tepidarium sometimes had a small pool to enable the bathers to have a dip in tepid water, before plunging into the cold-water piscina of the frigidarium.

The tepidarium of the Large East Baths of Mactar, Tunisia (photo Konogan Beaufay).