Therme Bad Vigaun

Therme Bad Vigaun lies in the Tennengau, the valley south of Salzburg between the Salzach and the Tennengebirge, and is the public half of the Medizinisches Zentrum Bad Vigaun, an establishment that also runs a clinic, a rehabilitation department and a residential cure programme. The place exists because of a borehole. A favourable report on building a cure centre at Vigaun was issued on 1 December 1970, the Kurgesellschaft Vigaun was founded in May 1972, and drilling started in October 1976. On 4 December 1976, St Barbara's day, the drill reached highly mineralised water at 1,360 metres with a bottom-hole temperature of 40 degrees, 155 atmospheres of pressure and 8.6 grams of sodium-calcium-chloride-sulphate minerals per litre. The Balneological Institute of the University of Vienna completed its analysis in June 1978 and the provincial government of Salzburg recognised the St. Barbara spring as a healing spring the same year. Building began at the end of 1982 and the centre opened in May 1985 after two and a half years of construction.

The spring reaches the surface at 34 degrees. The operator describes the thermal healing water as a sodium-calcium-chloride-sulphate mixture with a mineralisation of 8,200 mg per litre rising from a depth of 1,354 metres, and it is fed into the pools undiluted rather than blended with tap water. There are three of them, each held at a different temperature: a Roman-style basin at 35 degrees, an indoor pool at 31 degrees and an outdoor pool from 27 degrees. The bathing hall is built of natural stone, wood and tall panorama windows with generous rest areas, and the house states plainly that its medical orientation makes the bath unsuitable for children under six, which sets it apart from the family-oriented Austrian thermal parks.

The sauna landscape is graded from mild to hot and each stage is labelled with its temperature: an aroma steam bath and a brine steam bath both at 43 to 46 degrees, a Sanarium at 46 to 60 degrees offered as the gentler alternative to dry heat, Finnish saunas at 80 to 85 degrees, infrared cabins at 35 degrees, and outdoors a rock sauna at 90 to 95 degrees with an adjoining cold-water basin and a sauna garden looking across to the Tennengau mountains. Rest is provided for in a panorama room facing the same view, a sun terrace and a dark room with waterbeds.

The scale of the operation is stated by the house itself: 500 beds, around 647,000 treatments, 1,750 operations and infiltrations, 164,000 overnight stays and 130,000 thermal bath visitors a year. The bath is open Monday to Friday from 10:00 to 22:00 and at weekends from 10:00 to 21:00, closing to external guests on 24 December and at 17:00 on 31 December.