Spa architecture

Spa architecture (German: Kurarchitektur) is the name given to buildings that provide facilities for relaxation, recuperation and health treatment in spas. The architecture of these buildings is called "spa architecture" even though it is not a uniform architectural style, but a collective term for a genre of buildings with a spa function.

This type of building first appeared in Europe in the 17th century and had its heyday in the 19th century. The term spa architecture relates especially to buildings in the healing spas inland; those on the coast, the seaside resorts, developed their own resort architecture (German: Bäderarchitektur). However, since the early 19th century there have been many parallels of architectonic expression between inland spas and coastal resort spas.

There were spas even in classical antiquity. They owed their emergence to the healing properties of hot springs which were already known at that time. In the centre of Roman spas there were thermae or Roman baths, that were generally less symmetrical than the great in their towns, such as the Baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, because they had to conform to the topography of the terrain in which the thermal springs were located. The most important Roman spa was Baiae in the Bay of Naples. In German the spas of Aachen, Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden and Badenweiler were founded in the first century A.D. In Switzerland, St. Moritz first boomed with the discovery of its healing spring by Paracelsus.

After this initial flowering, interest in bathing for healing purposes subsided for a while in Europe. No large bath complexes were built during the Middle Ages on the scale that had been seen in antiquity. The Crusaders brought Islamic spa culture back with them from the Orient. With the rise of the bourgeoisie in the towns during the 12th century, public baths were built; however they did not have their own unique architectural expression and, externally, could not be distinguished from residential town houses. The great period of public bathing culture in the Middle Ages ended with the Thirty Years' War.

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