Felsentherme

The Felsentherme Bad Gastein sits at Bahnhofplatz 5 in Bad Gastein, in the Salzburg region of Austria, at an altitude above 1,000 metres. The municipality resolved in 1966 to build Austria's first thermal bath, ground was broken in July 1967, and after fourteen months of construction the Felsenbad was opened on 28 September 1968 as the first public thermal bath in the country. The architect Gerhard Garstenauer answered the shortage of level ground by blasting the rooms for what is now the Ruhetherme out of the mountainside, removing some 10,000 m³ of hard rock and leaving the exposed rock faces visible inside the bath. The house counted 450 visitors on its first public bathing day and about 120,000 in its first seven months.

The bath draws on the Gastein thermal water, which the operator describes as reaching the surface after a passage of roughly 3,000 years through the rock of the Hohe Tauern. It records eighteen springs delivering several million litres a day, of which one million litres a day flow into the indoor and outdoor pools of the Felsentherme. The water emerges at up to 46 °C and is tempered so that it reaches the various pools at 24-34 °C. It is naturally mineralised and carries radon; the operator states that the water is de-radonised for the bathing area.

The bathing area is divided into the Ruhetherme, cut into the rock, the Erlebnistherme aimed at families, the open-air Freilufttherme and the Wohlfühltherme. The separate panorama wellness area covers 600 m² and holds eight saunas and steam baths, among them the Zirben, Graukogel, Panorama and Stollen saunas in Finnish style, a steam bath, a brine grotto, an infrared cabin and a sanarium, together with two cold-water pools. A nudist sun deck carries two outdoor saunas, and the sauna area is open to guests aged sixteen and over. Aufguss ceremonies are led by the house's sauna masters to a published daily schedule.

The building has been altered repeatedly. A rock grotto with a thermal waterfall was added in 1983, the sauna section was rebuilt during the 1990s, a panorama lift and new entrance followed in 1998, and a connecting footbridge to the station and the Stubnerkogel valley terminus was built in 2002. Conversion of the Felsenbad into the Felsentherme cost about nine million euros and was celebrated on 12 October 2004. A general refurbishment in three stages between 2014 and 2017 renewed the facade, entrance and changing wing, added the Graukogel sauna and rebuilt the century-old sports pool as a stainless-steel basin. The bath opens daily from 09:00 to 21:00, with the sauna from 10:00 to 20:45.