Altmühltherme

The Altmühltherme is a thermal bath in Treuchtlingen, a small town on the river Altmühl in Middle Franconia, Bavaria. It is operated by the municipal utility Stadtwerke Treuchtlingen and employs about eighty people. The operator states that the bath was brought into service in 1996 after two years of construction, that its water surface exceeds 3,200 square metres, and that it is visited by roughly 400,000 guests a year. The complex combines a thermal bath, a sauna landscape, an indoor family and activity pool, an open-air pool, a salt lounge, a spa treatment department called Altmühlvital and catering, and is open all year.

The water comes from the Burgstall spring, which the operator describes as 812 metres deep and as carrying fossil water dated to an age of 18,400 years. The analysis published by the bath, carried out by the Institute for Water Chemistry and Chemical Balneology at the Technical University of Munich, classifies it as a sodium hydrogen carbonate spring with fluoride compounds and gives a total of dissolved solid minerals of 809.72 mg per litre, including 425.00 mg of hydrogen carbonate, 196.20 mg of sodium and 3.19 mg of fluoride. The operator lists chronic inflammatory and degenerative conditions of the joints and spine, soft-tissue rheumatism, recovery after operations or injuries to the locomotor system, and osteoporosis therapy among the indications.

The balneological programme published by the bath sets out the pools and their temperatures: an outdoor thermal pool at 32 °C, an upper-floor indoor thermal pool with bubble loungers at 33 °C, a second upper-floor indoor pool with a water bar at 34 °C, the Altmühlvital therapy pool for patients at 34 °C, a lower-ground indoor thermal pool at 35 °C and a hot whirlpool at 37 °C. Steam baths run at 45 to 50 °C at full humidity, and a Kneipp treading basin at 12 to 16 °C. Water gymnastics and what the operator calls a Mineralienaufguss, a mineral infusion, are each held five times a day in the lower-ground thermal pool, and the sports pool of the family and activity wing is also filled with the healing water.

The sauna landscape adjoins the thermal bath. Indoors it comprises a panorama sauna of up to 90 °C, a bio sauna at 70 °C and a steam bath at 50 °C, with an ice fountain, foot basins, a reading lounge and sauna catering. Outdoors, on a large timber terrace beside the Altmühl, there is a cold plunge pool, a warm pool, a sauna cabin built into a former railcar at 80 °C and the Altmühl sauna at 90 °C. The thermal bath opens daily from 09:00 to 21:00 and the sauna daily from 10:00 to 21:00, with a women-only sauna on Wednesday afternoons.