ABSTRACT
The original floor plan is lost, but already in the Renaissance, artists and architects made reconstruction drawings, including Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Antonio Palladio, and Rondolfo Lanciani. In early Christian times, Roman buildings had been remodelled into churches: the Pantheon as Santa Maria Rotonda, the tomb of Constantia as Santa Constanza, or the temple of Antonius and Faustina as SS. Cosmas and Damian. The spacious frigidarium was covered by a system of large internal cross vaults, supported with four external buttresses, considered to be one of the first application of this system in architectural history. Differently from other proposals, Michelangelo changed the orientation of the church by respecting the symmetrical vertical axis of the baths. He availed himself of all the skeletons of those Baths, out of which was seen formed a most beautiful temple with an entrance surpassing the expectations of all the architects; from which he acquired infinite praise and honor.
