Antiche Terme di Sardara

Antiche Terme di Sardara stands in the locality of Santa Maria Aquas, in the municipality of Sardara in southern Sardinia, less than an hour from Cagliari and Oristano. The operator's water page traces the supply to rainwater percolation: the water descends thousands of metres, and returns to the surface mineralised at a temperature the site gives as varying between 45 and 60 °C. It is classified as "bicarbonato-alcalino-sodica, ipertermale" (bicarbonate-alkaline-sodic, hyperthermal), a type the operator describes as very rare in Italy and compares with Vichy in Europe. The same page notes a nuraghe inside the spa park as evidence of protosardinian settlement, Roman baths known as "Acquae Neapolitanae" from around the third century BC, and the later Christian dedication to Santa Maria ad Aquas that gave the locality its present name.

The establishment presents itself as operating since 1898 and as the first thermal complex in Sardinia. It combines a hotel of 77 rooms with a restaurant, a fitness room and, as the site puts it, two thermal pools, all set in a park of about eight hectares planted with olive, myrtle, oleander, holm oak, carob, prickly pear and eucalyptus. The wellness side centres on the Thermarium, a circuit of about 45 minutes with a Finnish sauna, a Turkish bath, emotional filiform showers and a relax area with herbal teas and fresh fruit; guests need a bathrobe, swimsuit, slippers, towel and cap, all available to rent or buy at the hotel. The operator publishes no total count of pools beyond the two thermal pools mentioned on the home page, and no sauna count.

Medical use is a substantial part of the offer. The cure department lists physiotherapy, drinking cures, inhalation treatments, treatment of rhinogenic deafness, mud-balneotherapy and thermal rehabilitation, delivered under agreements with the Italian national health service, and the site describes a multidisciplinary specialist organisation covering diagnosis, therapy and rehabilitation. For aesthetic indications the operator states that the waters and muds have a marked eudermic effect, stimulate skin microcirculation and metabolism and act as anti-inflammatory, antiseptic and cleansing agents, which it says makes them suitable for blemishes caused by cellulite, acne and ageing.

Day visitors are catered for through a range of one-day products rather than a single published timetable: morning entry to the thermal pools from 9.00 to 12.30, afternoon entry from 14.00 to 19.30, a non-stop pools day, evening entry with dinner, and night bathing from 22.00 to 24.00. Packages combine pool entry with lunch or dinner.