Siebentäler Therme

The Siebentäler Therme stands at Schweizer Wiese 9, 76332 Bad Herrenalb, a spa town of about 7,700 people in the Landkreis Calw in the northern Black Forest. It is operated by Stadtwerke Bad Herrenalb GmbH, whose imprint gives the establishment's full legal name as "Siebentäler Therme -Mineraltherme-".

On the water, the operator's own evidence is specific and the label needs care. The Stadtwerke state that in 1963 drilling on the Schweizer Wiese — the same plot the bath stands on — struck healing water at a depth of 600 metres, that a drinking pavilion was built in summer 1965 and that healing water flowed from the tap there by September 1965. They publish the formal designation of that water as a fluoride-bearing sodium-calcium-chloride-sulphate water and give its analysis as sodium 606.4 mg/l, calcium 168 mg/l, chloride 872 mg/l, sulphate 535 mg/l and fluoride 3.07 mg/l; the water counts as a medicinal product, is subject to regular quality control and is de-arsenised. So there is a named, analysed, genuinely mineral source in a documented borehole, and it is not heated tap water dosed with salt. What is missing is the temperature: neither the Stadtwerke nor the Therme publishes a source temperature, a discharge rate or a spa-authority thermal certificate anywhere on the site, and the operator's own pages describe thermal springs at Bad Herrenalb only as long suspected — "Schon vor langer Zeit wurden Thermalquellen in Bad Herrenalb vermutet" — rather than as measured. German Wikipedia, used as a second source, states that a borehole 600 metres deep struck a mineral-rich thermal spring in 1964 and that the thermal bath built on it opened in 1971, at which point Herrenalb became Bad Herrenalb. That gives 1964 against the operator's 1963 for the same borehole, a contradiction between the two sources that is left standing here. The honest summary is therefore: mineral water from a 600 m borehole with a published analysis, called a Mineraltherme by its own operator and a Thermalbad by Wikipedia, with no published source temperature to settle whether it is thermal in the strict sense.

The bath is at present closed and stripped back to a building site. The operator states that the therme is being revitalised and is closed for the duration of the works, that the demolition phase is finished and the next construction phase has begun, and that the project is funded under Baden-Württemberg's tourism infrastructure programme (TIP). The two operator sites disagree on when it will return: the Therme's own pages state that a reopening in 2027 is currently expected, while the Stadtwerke's Therme page still says the bath will reopen in summer 2026 and dates an exhibition of construction renderings as running until that summer 2026 reopening. As of September 2026 the bath had not reopened. Work is visibly active rather than suspended: a guided public tour of the building site was announced for Saturday 26 September 2026 at 13:00 with registration by 25 September, an exhibition of renderings by 4a Architekten Stuttgart and current site photographs is on show in the Wandelhalle of the Kurhaus, and a new managing director for the town's baths took up post on 1 October 2025.

Because the website has been reduced to essentials for the duration of the works — the operator says that until the reopening only the most important information is shown — no pool count, pool sizes, water temperatures, sauna cabins, opening hours or admission prices are currently published, and none are given here. The only description of the offer that survives on the site is on its easy-language page, which lists indoor and outdoor pools with warm water, saunas and steam baths, massages and wellness treatments and children's swimming courses, and states that the water is particularly healthy and helps with joint and back problems. What the rebuilt bath will contain is described only as an expanded range of themed worlds and a contemporary design. Other bathing in the town during the closure is the Waldfreibad, a separate open-air pool also run by the Stadtwerke.