Apollion Sauna

Apollion is the oldest gay sauna in Rome, open since 1994 and set just a three-minute walk from the Colosseum and Gay Street in the vaulted cellars of an early-1900s palazzo, where a magical run of brick arches makes bathing here feel like slipping into the Rome of the gladiators. Compact but characterful and reliably clean, it offers a Finnish dry sauna, a steam bath with chromotherapy, a hydromassage pool and jacuzzi, spacious relaxation cabins, a video room, a darkroom with glory holes, a smoking room and a small bar, plus a well-regarded daily massage service with professional therapists. Central, easy to reach, and run by friendly, English-speaking staff, it draws a genuinely mixed crowd of locals and tourists from their twenties to their sixties (afternoons skew busy and a touch older), and remains a favorite for a relaxing, sociable few hours amid steam and history. Membership and ID are required, as at all Italian saunas.