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.

Early predecessors in antiquity and the Middle Ages
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 imperial baths 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.

15th to 18th centuries
Spa culture experienced a boom in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries and became an important economic factor. When it gained further importance in the second of the 17th century, drinking of the waters became the fashion instead of the hitherto popular bathing culture. If a spa town could not keep pace with this development and carry out the costly building measures needed, it resorted to simpler immersion bathing facilities (the Armenbäder and Bauernbäder). Important ancient spas such as Baden-Baden and Wiesbaden were affected in this way.

In the baroque era there were important new developments in the guise of aristocratic bathing facilities (the Fürstenbädern). Their origins could be found in the castles. The best preserved example in Germany is Brückenau. Prince-bishop Amand of Buseck began extending the town in 1747. On a terraced hill around three kilometres from the town a spa house (Kurhaus) was built. A lime avenue framed by a pavilion ran from the valley up to the palace-like building, forming a central axis. The prototype for the spa at Brückenau was the maison de plaisance of Château de Marly, which was built from 1679 to 1687 by Louis XIV.

The most important spa towns of the 18th century are not the relatively small princely baths, but Bath in England and Aachen in Germany. Both towns played a decisive part in the development of spa architecture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Spa culture in Aachen recovered during the late 17th century from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War. A key influence here was the spa doctor, François Blondel who, through his books on balneology, made Aachen renown throughout Europe