The peach-stuccoed Pupp is also rumoured to be the inspiration for Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel. A night’s stay costs from €150/£125.
Away from the waters
The landscape around Karlovy Vary is spectacular, with rare rock formations, tumbling down castles and ancient abbeys. Around six miles away is Loket nad Ohri, a riverside community with a 13th-century castle, pretty Gothic churches and a famous brewery.
Then and now: how the spa town experience has changed
Etiquette
Then: In the 18th and 19th centuries, European elites would typically dedicate a whole summer to ‘taking the cure’.
In most places mixing of the sexes in the water was highly encouraged and behaviour could be poor (imagine the characters outside Wetherspoons on a Saturday night and transpose them into a bath). Flirting, kissing, gambling, and singing lewd ‘bathing songs’ were all on the proverbial table.
Now: Modern day celebs are busy people. A typical stay might be over a weekend and include some prescribed exercises at the gym, a physiotherapy session, a consultation with a nutritionist, some spa time and a massage.
“Spa culture is no longer just about swimming and drinking some water. Now we also think about your general wellbeing and time away from your phone to be in nature,” says Henning Matthiesen of Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa.
Attire
Then: In Elizabethan Bath, the culture was that all bathers took to the waters naked (with crowds of onlookers) – and anyone refusing to do so could be forcibly stripped. In the more prudish 19th century, fully dressed was the norm – wigs, bonnets et al. Some women punted for sack-like robes with lead weights sewn into the hem to keep their skirts from floating up.
Now: You’re more likely to see Louis Vuitton towels and Gucci swimsuits. Although on the Continent, prepare to go starkers in the saunas.
Trendy treatments
Then: Bracing walks and drinking/bathing in/inhaling the sulphur water.
Now: IV drips, chocolate massages, mild electrocution… the options are endless.
Dietary tips
Then: Diets back in the day were saved for the dangerously obese. Most guests had servants bring them plates of roast meat and sugary treats while they bathed. Sweet-smelling cream cakes and spa wafers were popular for combating the fetid scent of sulphur.
Now: Kale smoothies, ginger-infused water and avocado salad.
Troublesome ailments
Then: Infertility, eye infections, alcoholism – you name it.
Now: Weight loss.
The bill
Then: The price for a bath at the Friedrichsbad Spa, Baden-Baden, when it first opened in 1877, was 70 pfennige (about €5/£4 in today’s money).
Now: A day at Friedrichsbad Spa: €32/£27
