Palais Thermal

The Palais Thermal is a listed thermal bath at Kernerstraße 5 in Bad Wildbad, in the northern Black Forest of Baden-Württemberg. It is operated by the Staatsbad Wildbad, one of the four state spas maintained by the Land of Baden-Württemberg. The operator characterises the house as a bathing palace of oriental decoration, Moorish architecture and Jugendstil detail, whose Moorish hall follows models from the Alhambra in Granada and now serves as a rest room with a cafeteria. In Bad Wildbad, groundwater rises from more than 1,000 metres depth at 36 to 41 °C; according to German Wikipedia, cited here as a second source, the thermal water is today drawn from five deep wells rather than the natural spring outlets.

Bath houses are documented in Wildbad from 1521, and the town was probably already a known bathing place in the 14th and 15th centuries. Duke Ulrich had the Ulrichsbau with a princes' bath built in 1545/46, and by the 17th century three further bath buildings existed. The present structure grew out of plans by Nikolaus Friedrich von Thouret, who argued in 1835 for demolition and replacement and presented designs in 1837. Construction began in 1839 and, after Thouret's death in 1845, was completed under Kreisbaurat L. Fischer in 1847 at a cost of around 500,000 gulden, more than twice the estimate. The pools were cut into the natural rock directly above the springs and filled by artesian pressure. Known first as the Great or Royal Bath Building, it was renamed the Graf-Eberhard-Bad around 1860 after Count Eberhard II.

The building's present character comes from the "Maurisierung" of 1896 to 1901, when the large communal baths were subdivided into smaller pools, the walls tiled and painted with ornament, the windows reglazed with Jugendstil motifs, four further princes' baths added on the east side, and the formerly open inner courtyard roofed over as a Moorish hall with a mosaic floor, coloured marble panelling and pointed arcades carrying a decorated glass-and-iron canopy. After the bathing facilities fell largely out of use in 1978, planning for their reactivation began in 1986; between 1991 and 1995 the listed building was converted for around 33 million marks into a nostalgic bathing house with a sauna landscape and steam bath, the historic bathing area restored to its 1920s condition in agreement with the heritage authorities. It reopened as the Palais Thermal in December 1995, and in 2011 a wooden roof deck with an outdoor thermal pool was added.

The bath admits guests aged 12 and over; families with younger children are directed to the separate Vital Therme in the same town. Bathing with or without swimwear is permitted throughout the building except on Tuesdays, the designated textile bathing day, when swimwear is compulsory in the indoor pools; the sauna area is textile-free at all times. A textile sauna at 70 °C with automatic infusions was added recently and is included in the bathing ticket, while the panorama outdoor pool on the sun deck belongs to the sauna area and requires the sauna surcharge. The house opens Monday to Friday from 13:00 to 22:00 and at weekends and on public holidays from 10:00 to 22:00, with bathing and sauna ending 30 minutes before closing; it closes annually for maintenance, in 2026 from 22 June to 5 July.