So, there you are floating gently on your back in the luxury of a vast, steaming hot open-air pool. Beside you, patrician faces emerge out of the mist. Men are gathered in twos and threes, seemingly intensely focused on a discussion that loses none of its urgency notwithstanding the surreal effect of what are literally talking (and floating) heads.
Nearby, groups of women are gathered in similar groups, hair neatly tied up, earrings on show and sunglasses only slightly misted over. Were it not for the modern shades, the scene would have a truly timeless quality.
The faces might be those of Etruscan nobles, Roman senators, medieval curia cardinals, or Renaissance maestri, arguing over their next shipment of bronze, the forthcoming Gallic War, the latest Inquisition victim or a much-wanted commission.
For this is the Terme Dei Papi, just up the road from us at Viterbo and one of many thermal baths throughout Italy. This is a place whose hot thermal waters have been easing the aching bones and bodies of Northern Lazio folks from Etruscan times right through to today's modern civil servant.
I well remember being puzzled, shortly after arriving in Italy, when a senior state employee told us that he would soon have two weeks off to go "take a cure". He went on to explain that, with the help of a medical certificate, he had the right to two weeks' of thermal water "cure" every year.
The tradition is still alive and well. An official from the largest of the Confederated Trade Unions, CGIL, told The Irish Times this week that state employees can still apply for their two weeks of thermal water treatments.
The GGIL official added that, given bureaucratic difficulties, you may have to apply up to one year in advance but, if you can produce the requisite medical certificate, then the two weeks are yours and, what is more, they are not considered part of annual holidays.
It must be easy for a doctor to recommend thermal baths for patients. The promotional literature (and there is a lot of it, just consult the Internet under the Italian word terme) suggests that they cater for a range of ailments which includes respiratory problems, lumbago and arthritis, as well as gynaecological, muscular, bone and skin problems. Furthermore, most thermal baths offer a variety of saunas and natural beauty treatments including mud baths.
Not that, as Bob Dylan used to say, you need a weather man to tell you which way the wind blows. One foot in the warm, relaxing waters is enough to let you know that you are about to "de-tox", "de-stress" and relax.
The Etruscans understood it only too well, all of 2,500 years ago. When the Roman consul, Fabius Rullianus, travelled north from Rome in the third century BC, he found that the good old Viterbo boys knew all about how to ease aching limbs in the hot waters of the Bullicame, the region's natural spring source.
When a variety of foreign nobles and conniving Romans chased 12th- and 13th-century popes such as Eugenius III and Alexander IV out of Rome, they scurried north to take refuge in Viterbo. In the process, they both left Viterbo with a splendid heritage of medieval palaces while at the same time discovering for themselves the curative effects of the waters nearby.
By the year 1404 Pope Boniface IX was taking out a season ticket of mud and bath treatment at Viterbo for his "grave pains of the bones". Forty-six years after that Pope Nicholas V opted to build a huge palace on the site of the baths, thus giving them their current name of Terme Dei Papi (literally, the thermal baths of the popes).
Michelangelo, on his way down from Tuscany to Rome, dropped in for a quick splash and was so impressed that he dashed off a couple of sketches. Dante Alighieri, too, gives the old Bullicame an honourable mention in the XIVth Canto of the Divina Commedia (lines 79-81).
Once frequented by the shakers and makers, the thermal bath is now open to the public, be it at a price range that can run from £8 per "swim" to about £800 a week for full board and pension. Money well spent, says this Northern Lazio dweller.