Werratal Therme

The WerratalTherme stands on the edge of Bad Sooden-Allendorf in northern Hessen, a Hessian spa town whose economy rested for centuries on salt. The building takes that history literally: the historic graduation tower next door, a wall of blackthorn brushwood over which brine is trickled, has been drawn into the sauna garden and works as an open-air inhalatorium, and the street address, Am Gradierwerk, says the same thing. The brine itself is drawn from a well 420 metres deep at a source temperature of 34 C, and every basin in the bathing hall carries three per cent salt.

Four pools make up the bathing world. The indoor brine pool covers 255 square metres at 32 C, with a depth between 0.90 and 1.35 metres, bubble loungers, massage jets and neck showers, and a lift for guests who cannot use the steps. A swim-out channel leads from it to the 260-square-metre outdoor pool, also 32 C and 1.35 metres deep, where a current channel with a whirlpool bench, floor bubblers and further neck showers are set among sun terraces. The wave pool is the largest at 420 square metres and the coolest at 28 C: twice an hour, for ten minutes at a time, waves up to a metre high roll across a floor that shelves gradually like a beach. The smallest basin, 60 square metres at 34 C, is the activity pool, given over to aqua fitness, physiotherapy and baby swimming and open to general bathers only when no course is running.

The sauna world lists eight heat rooms, ranging from a 40 C brine grotto with very high humidity and a steam bath through a colour-lit sanarium at 60 C to a Kelo-pine cabin at 65 C, herbal and mental saunas at 75 and 80 C, and a log-house sauna and a Finnish sauna both at 90 C. Between rounds there is an ice fountain, a fireplace room with a panoramic view over the sauna garden, and two sun terraces. A separate Dead Sea salt grotto, a course programme and a physiotherapy department round out the health side of the house.

The therme opens daily, holidays included, from 9:30 to 21:30, with the outdoor pool available from 9:45 to 21:15. Wednesday evenings from 17:30 are reserved for women in the sauna, an after-work tariff covers three hours of bath and sauna on weekday evenings, and on the first Saturday of each month a long sauna night runs to 01:00, textile-free throughout the therme after 22:00. Tickets are sold in two-, three- and four-hour blocks and as day cards, with a discount for holders of a local spa card.