Spa Infrastructure
There is distinctive spa-specific support infrastructure in The Great Spa Towns of Europe. This includes hospitals based on mineral springs, facilities to bottle and export water, salt extraction facilities, spring water supply pipelines, administrative buildings and funicular railways.
In some of the component towns, early spa hospital buildings survive, including several in the City of Bath. Here, the Mineral Water Hospital is of world importance because of its role in pioneering the discipline of diagnostic medicine.
Similarly, Vichy was one of the first French spa towns to introduce special baths for the poor.
Bad Kissingen provides several exceptional examples of spa infrastructure. This German spa town has salt production sites, brine pumping infrastructure, bottled mineral water warehouse, an abattoir designed as a basilica to disguise its industrial appearance and a steamboat line.
Funicular railways can be found in several towns, accessing the higher ground where lookout towers, restaurants, monuments and castle ruins were attractive destinations.
Railways were extended to all component parts and some (City of Bath, Baden bei Wien and Baden-Baden) had some of the earliest connections in the 1840s.
Railways were the main transport means for more than a century, often for international guests.
Railway stations are therefore an important feature of the urban ensemble. They provided the first impressions of the town, and therefore high standards of architecture were often demanded.