The Terme Achilliane under the Cathedral
As with other Catanese Baroque monuments, the cathedral was built on part of an ancient Roman building. Located lower than ground level and completely hidden from sight, the Terme Achilliane extend as far as the southern part of the piazza. A door on the right-hand side of the cathedral façade grants access to the large construction, but today it remains closed to the public for reasons of safety.
The importance of this baths complex, one of many in Roman Catania, lies in the fact that it still maintains the identifiable structures of the various rooms, among which a large vaulted rectangular room measuring 12 metres by 13 stands out. These wide valuts, reproduced in some eighteenth-century drawings, are embellished with stuccoes of images of human figures, animals and vines with bunches of grapes. According to some experts this large construction, which was built near the sea, dates to the third century A.D.
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