The subterranean well house – a healing spring?
At the well house you will be amazed and mystified at the same time.
When it was discovered in 1998, it was fully preserved, having survived 1800 years completely untouched in the ground. We presume that the quality of the water prompted the people in Augusta Raurica to build it: to this day the water in the well has a slightly elevated sulphur content. Pliny, a Roman naturalist, recommended sulphurous water as a cure for nervous disorders.
The well house was built around AD 80. Twenty years later it was redesigned, probably at the same time as the nearby baths were constructed. Once they were no longer in use after AD 250 the well house became a kind of waste dump. Worth particular mention are the fragments of some 6,000 ceramic moulds used to cast coins. The skeletons of animals and some humans, both adults and infants, have also been found here. What exactly occurred here remains a mystery.