ABSTRACT
A study of Renaissance bath architecture moves the relationship between architecture and the body toward a more secular path. Unlike baths or bath houses, establishments at thermal springs can be hard to account for in conventional architectural vocabulary. Didier Boisseuil suggests the term 'éspace thermale' an architectonic concept but one that went beyond the built form to describe locales created by natural conditions of pools and bathing places with or without buildings and structures. The design and planning of the ideal early modern thermal bath and the debt it owed to contemporary science is most thoroughly described in the theoretical writings of the Renaissance architect Antonio Averlino il Filarete. The architectural components of the setting include a vaulted roof, which divided the pool into one area for men and the other for women, a loggia viewing platform, rooms for resting and lodgings in a range of accommodations.
