The gymnasium and baths complex is the showpiece of Salamis and the first major monument you reach on the standard circuit. A large rectangular palaestra is ringed by re-erected marble columns with Corinthian capitals, framing the open ground where athletes once trained. Statues — many of them headless, decapitated during Christian iconoclasm — stand around the edges.
Behind the palaestra lies the bath complex itself, with a sequence of frigidarium, tepidarium and caldarium rooms whose floors were once raised on hypocaust pillars to allow hot air to circulate underneath. Fragments of wall mosaic survive in the latrines and in some of the side chambers — look for the Leda and the Swan panel and the geometric border patterns. The plumbing channels and broken hypocaust supports give a clear sense of how the system worked.