The steam room, unrivalled comfort

The steam room, the ancestor of our bathroom, was a true luxury in a 15th-century bourgeois home. Discover the one in the Jacques Coeur Palace!

Fancy a hot bath?

The Romans were the first to introduce hot baths. It lasted until the end of the Middle Ages. As early as the 9th century, public baths or steam rooms to induce perspiration.

At the Palais Jacques Cœur, a steam room operated on ahypocaust system.

The heating room was located on the first floor, near the kitchen well that supplied the system with water. The proofer consists of two interconnected rooms: the first is the proofer itself, and the second, smaller and less hot, is where you can rest after sweating.

Access to the proofer from the heating room is via three steps for the servants and a private staircase to the west, which leads to the private apartments on the mezzanine and second floors.

Originally, a chimney in the heating room fed the hypocaust, which consisted of 60 cm-high brick stacks. In the steam room, a wooden floor and benches for guests rested on a porphyry (red volcanic stone) floor.

Salle de chauffe
© Palais Jacques Cœur / Centre des monuments nationaux

What is a hypocaust?

A hypocaust is an underfloor heating system. In the palace, hot air was supplied through the left wall of the fireplace, via a rectangular duct located at the base of the hearth. On the opposite side, in the wall of the noble staircase, there is an air intake vent, the flow of which could be regulated by a small wooden flap opening to the outside.

The proofer room, accessible from the right-hand staircase, forms a rectangle measuring 2.2 x 2.60 meters. It is cross-vaulted falling on lintels evoking the function of the room, a figure stoking the fire and a woman pouring water.

Servants poured hot and cold water into the double washbasin. On either side of the wall are two independent basins: on the proofer side, the two basins are supplied by pipes with taps coming from the two basins on the heating room side (so the proofer is supplied without entering the proofer itself).

A gutter runs along the sides of the oven to collect condensation water draining into the heating room.

Jacques Cœur was never able to enjoy all these comforts, as he had to go into exile before he could live in his magnificent palace...