Thermal & Wellness Towns
Springs, colonnades and the old ritual of taking the waters shaped these towns from Baden-Baden to Beppu. Thermal capitals are travel at walking pace, prescribed rather than planned.
A thermal town exists because of what comes out of the ground, and its whole plan is a machine for delivering that to people who were told to take it.
The water dictates the architecture. A pump room to drink in, a colonnade to walk in when it rains, a park because the doctors ordered exercise, a theatre and a casino because three weeks is a long time, and a station large enough for the trunks. Almost every European spa has the same five buildings in the same relationship — and where one is missing, something went wrong with the town.
Drinking and bathing are different cures. At Karlovy Vary and Montecatini the water is taken by the glass at fixed hours, each spring prescribed for a different complaint. At Baden-Baden and Budapest you get in. Do not confuse the two before booking.
The season inverted. Most of these towns were built for a clientele that has gone — antibiotics, then empires dissolving — and several are more interesting out of season than in it.
Beyond Europe the logic differs. Beppu discharges more geothermal water than anywhere except Yellowstone; Rotorua's Māori community has cooked and bathed in it for six centuries.
Go in winter, when the steam is visible.