A luxurious 2000-year-old Roman villa with a thermal bath and underfloor heating has been unearthed in Kempten, Bavaria, one of Germany's oldest settlements. Below the city of Kempten are the foundations of the Roman city of Cambodunum, founded by the Roman emperor Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus in 15 BC. Cambodunum was officially founded by the emperor Augustus in the first century AD for the strategic value of the place. The Roman city offered access to the Alpine passes that connected it to Bregenz, the capital of Vorarlberg in present-day Austria and through Lake Constance and the Rhine, Cambodunum was also connected to Gaul. The ancient Romans lived in houses with thermal baths and underfloor heating, as evidenced by a previous excavation carried out in Archaeologischer Park Cambodunum in Kempten. The newly discovered Roman villa is one of the oldest ever discovered in Germany. The villa was exceptionally large, stretching for at least 800 square meters over two floors, and was located near the temple district, the most sought-after area of the ancient city, at the western end. It had screed floors, frescoed walls and warm private bathrooms with underfloor heating. The researchers discovered that the Roman engineers had installed a floor heating system in the house, known as an "ipocausto", which has been the precursor of all current central heating systems.
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