January 2026
Culture Trip, a leading global travel and culture publisher, has released a comprehensive travel guide to The Great Spa Towns of Europe, highlighting Europe’s most iconic and historically significant spa destinations. The guide explores how these towns shaped wellness travel and why they remain compelling destinations for today’s mindful travellers.
Designed for anyone planning a restorative journey steeped in heritage, health and local culture, the Culture Trip guide showcases how thermal tourism and spa town travel are deeply embedded in Europe’s leisure traditions. The article invites readers to discover spa towns as more than places for relaxation, but as historical heartlands of wellbeing and social life.
“Out of the hundreds of spa towns across the continent, these eleven towns are considered by UNESCO to have ‘Outstanding Universal Value’, as the most authentic representations of Europe’s spa culture.”
Read the full guide: A Travel Guide to The Great Spa Towns of Europe — https://theculturetrip.com/europe/articles/a-travel-guide-to-the-great-spa-towns-of-europe/
A woman relaxes in the thermal waters of Karlovy Vary. Photo by Jordan Banks, JRNY Magazine.
A Growing Interest in Wellness Tourism
The publication of this travel guide reflects a broader trend in travel publishing and global tourism: the rising interest in heritage-led wellness travel. Readers increasingly seek destinations that combine authentic local culture with opportunities for relaxation, health improvement and mindful exploration. The Great Spa Towns of Europe offer a compelling mix of all these elements. In fact, these spa towns were even the start of wellness tourism!
“Designed hundreds of years ago as the ultimate wellbeing resorts, The Great Spa Towns of Europe pioneered health and wellness tourism as we know it today.”
The Great Spa Towns of Europe
The Great Spa Towns of Europe is a serial, transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site comprised of eleven spa towns across seven European countries. Together, these towns comprise one ‘property’ .
From the hundreds of spa towns across Europe, these eleven are the most authentic examples of the European spa phenomenon. As epicentres for social, cultural and political innovations, these spa towns shaped architecture, urban design, medicine, health and wellness tourism and modern European identity.
The site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on 24th July 2021; the highest international recognition for global cultural and natural heritage sites. The Site is managed by The Great Spa Towns of Europe Association, formally registered in August 2022 in Baden bei Wien, Austria.