The internationality of a spa town within The Great Spa Towns of Europe is an idealised diagram of the historic urban landscape. A distinct spa quarter, based on the natural springs, is shown at the centre.  Various elements radiate out from this core. In some towns, there may be one source, or small clusters of sources in a single spa quarter. In some towns, polycentric spa quarters have arisen as the result of multiple or widely distributed sources.

Each town shares common elements, yet their structure and spatial layout varies depending on local geographical conditions and constraints.

Spa Town Elements

What makes a town become one of The Great Spa Towns of Europe?

Out of the hundreds of spa towns across Europe, this group of 11 possess specific characteristics. These traits bring these towns together as a group considered by UNESCO to have ‘Outstanding Universal Value’.

• Mineral Springs: natural sources of curative mineral water, including natural geothermal and cold water.

• Spa Urban Typology: an innovative, spa-specific spatial ensemble that organised the town in accordance with the mineral springs and spa town activities, reflecting a new urban typology with no earlier parallel.

• Spa Architecture: a form and design of buildings that had no earlier parallel. Their function enabled people to take the cure in different ways, including taking the waters (e.g. baths, pump rooms, drinking halls and prototypes such as spring pavilions and the ‘kurhaus’), spaces for socialising and leisure (e.g. casinos, assembly rooms, theatres, opera houses and dance halls), accommodation to house large numbers of guests (e.g. hotels and villas).

• Spa Support Infrastructure: distinctive spa-specific support infrastructure (e.g. hospitals based on mineral springs, facilities to bottle and export water, salt extraction facilities, spring water supply pipelines, administrative buildings and funicular railways).

• Therapeutic Spa Landscape: open spaces and settings designed to take gentle exercise, sport and leisure as a contribution to the therapy of taking the cure (e.g. a green or woodland environment, walking paths, promenades, galleries, colonnades and landscaped parks). Extensive networks of paths might be linked to particular medical conditions.

• A Continued Spa Function Today: with tourists continuing to visit the towns for their spa offering, alongside local businesses and residents continuing traditions, such as drinking from the mineral springs. The social practice of ‘taking the cure’ continues, representing an ongoing and sustainable function for the town, with living traditions contributing to a distinctive identity and sense of place (e.g. spa features remaining in use, complementary developments that sustain the cultural practices of spa traditions).

• Intangible Values: scientific, artistic and literary values, events and cultural traditions, alongside internationalism, cultural coexistence and the interchange of ideas and innovations, which shaped developments across medicine, science, politics, arts and culture.