SteinTherme Bad Belzig

The SteinTherme stands at the edge of Bad Belzig, a small town in the Hoher Fläming hills of Brandenburg, and is run by the municipal Bad Belzig Kur GmbH. The operator makes a point of its calm rather than its size: the BadeWelt holds six brine and warm-water pools with more than 750 square metres of water surface, along with several quiet zones and the usual massage jets, bubble loungers and neck showers. The large outdoor brine pool is 1.30 metres deep, kept at 32 degrees and mixed to two per cent salt, with bubble loungers, massage jets and water spouts, and it opens onto a garden big enough to walk in.

The house speciality is the LichtKlangRaum, a darkened floating pool where the brine is held at 34 degrees and concentrated to 4.5 per cent, enough that bathers float without effort while light and colour play above and below the surface to a soundtrack. Elsewhere the concentration is set to the purpose: three per cent in the therapy and movement pool used for physiotherapy and functional training, two per cent in the outdoor basin. Courses run through the week, from baby swimming and the children's Seepferdchen badge to aqua fitness and brine gymnastics at 10:30 and 12:30.

The brine itself is what makes the place a spa town. It rises from great depth at 30 °C carrying roughly 20 per cent salt — a concentration the operator compares to the Dead Sea — and is diluted before it reaches the pools. A 2015 laboratory analysis published on the site puts sodium at 69,000 mg/l, sulphate at 3,360, calcium at 1,360, magnesium at 914, bromide at 62, iron at 4.8 and iodide at 1.45 mg/l. The town markets the water for circulation, joints, airways and skin.

The SaunaWelt, entered on a combined ticket, gathers seven sweat rooms: a Finnish sauna at 75 degrees, a barn sauna at 95, a bio sauna at 65, a Russian banja at 85, a herbal steam bath at 47, a hot-air room at 55 and a newer brine steam bath. Cooling comes from a plunge pool, a cold pool and a Kneipp basin, and there is a large sauna garden with its own outdoor pool; afterwards a tepidarium, a rest hall and an open fire. Infusions are poured hourly by staff using pure essential oils, guests are asked not to pour their own, and there is a monthly midnight sauna. Admission runs from 8 euro for an hour in the BadeWelt to 28 euro for a day card, or 11 to 38 euro with the sauna included; the restaurant KURPARK15 in the foyer can be visited without a bath ticket.