Baños San Jerónimo

Baños San Jerónimo is a Mexican bathing establishment bearing the name of the fourth-century Christian scholar Saint Jerome — San Jerónimo — one of many Mexican bathing facilities whose names reflect the deep integration of Catholic religious naming into the secular and domestic landscape of Mexican public life since the Spanish colonial period, when the Church's authority over naming extended from churches and towns to the springs, bathhouses, and healing waters that colonizers encountered and exploited across New Spain. Mexico's urban bathing establishments — called baños públicos, baños de vapor, or simply baños — serve a population that has used public bathing facilities as an extension of domestic hygiene and social life since the pre-Columbian period, when the Aztec temazcal steam bath was a central institution of daily life in the cities of the central highlands. San Jerónimo's bathing establishment continues the Mexican tradition of public communal bathing in the colonial city tradition, offering steam, warm water, and traditional bathing services to local communities.