ThermeNatur Bad Rodach

ThermeNatur stands on the northern edge of Bad Rodach in Upper Franconia, on the strip of former border land now called the Grünes Band, and the operator presents it as the first thermal bath in Franconia. It is certified as a state-recognised healing-spring spa, and the water it uses is described as a calcium-magnesium-sulphate thermal spring arriving at 32 to 34 °C from a borehole 650 metres deep. Two springs are actually tapped: the published analysis, dated November 2004, gives Therme 1 and a more strongly mineralised Therme 2, in which sulphate reaches 544.92 milligrams per litre, calcium 189.86 and magnesium 42.60. The indications listed are all musculoskeletal: wear of the spine and joints, disc damage, osteoporosis, soft-tissue rheumatism, recovery after operations and injuries.

The bathing hall and grounds hold more than 1,000 square metres of water surface across six basins. The floor plan names an indoor and an outdoor movement pool at 32 to 33 °C, a round pool in the rotunda at 33 to 34 °C, a heart-and-circulation pool at 26 to 28 °C that is 20 metres long and meant for lap swimming, a brine pool with a current channel and whirlpool at 35 °C, and a separately housed therapy pool at 33 to 34 °C. Around them sit a steam bath, a tepidarium, cold and warm Kneipp basins indoors and out at 15 °C and 33 to 34 °C, a barefoot path, a water-bed lounge and the SalzLUST salt room at 30 °C.

The brine pool carries the house speciality, marketed as KaMaLiCa. During the original drilling a deeper and far more mineral-rich water was found but could not be captured, the two waters having mixed; the operator now doses potassium, magnesium, lithium and calcium into the brine pool in calculated quantities to reconstruct that lost composition, four times a day at 9.45, 12.45, 15.45 and 19.45.

The sauna world, named Erdfeuer and certified at five stars, is arranged around open fires and splits between outdoors and indoors. Outside are the PanoramaSauna at 85 to 100 °C with a 15-square-metre window and 95 seats, a Kelo log-house sauna of polar pine at 90 to 100 °C with 60 seats, a smaller Kelo earth sauna sunk into the ground at 80 to 90 °C with 12 seats, and a domed earth sauna at 80 to 90 °C with 30 seats; inside are a Finnish cabin at 85 to 95 °C and the low-temperature BioOase at 60 to 65 °C, each seating 20. A nudist swimming pool, a treetop walk and a salt lounge belong to the same area. The bath opens at 9 and the sauna at 10, closing at 21 from Sunday to Thursday and at 23 on Friday and Saturday. The house traces its beginnings to 1976.