Stratonicea Roman Bath 2

The Stratonicea Roman Bath 2 is the second of the ancient bath complexes preserved at Stratonikeia (Stratonicea), a remarkable Hellenistic and Roman city in Yatağan District of Muğla Province in southwestern Turkey, a UNESCO Tentative List site still being actively excavated from beneath an Ottoman village that occupied it until the 1970s. Stratonikeia was one of the major cities of ancient Caria, celebrated for its remarkably complete ancient street plan, its temples to Zeus Chrysaoreus and Hecate at Lagina, and its extraordinary state of preservation beneath centuries of Ottoman and modern occupation. The second bath complex at Stratonikeia reflects the wealth and civic ambitions of a city whose ancient inhabitants invested in multiple bath facilities — a luxury that testifies to the prosperity of a community that controlled extensive agricultural territories and served as the religious centre for the entire Chrysaoric League of Carian cities.