Medieval bathhouse in Dieburg

By the time the bathhouse was built in Dieburg in 1579, the boom in municipal baths had passed. Starting in the 13th century, bathhouses were established as places of social gathering, where people bathed, ate, made music, and otherwise enjoyed themselves. Yet due to the epidemic waves of the late Middle Ages, such as the plague or syphilis, such localities lost their appeal and were ultimately shut down one by one.

Mittelalterliches Badhaus in Dieburg, color photography, 2004, photographer: Diana Kremer; source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Badhaus_Dieburg.jpg, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-SA 3.0).