Uzdrowisko Ciechocinek

Uzdrowisko Ciechocinek SA is the spa company of Ciechocinek in Kujawsko-Pomorskie, working with the local salt brine (solanka) that has been extracted here since the 1820s. The company's own chronology puts the start of the resort at 1836: the first mention of the healing action of Ciechocinek brine dates from 1828-1829, but officially the beginning of the spa is taken to be the year when four copper tubs at the local inn allowed brine baths to be taken continuously. The brine had first been captured for a state saltworks, taken over by the Treasury of the Kingdom of Poland in 1824; salt production began in 1832 and the company states that the works still runs on unchanged technology today.

The graduation towers (tężnie) that Ciechocinek is known for were built as part of that saltworks. Towers I and II were raised between 1824 and 1828 to designs by Jan Jakub Graff, reaching 648 m and 719 m in length; tower III, 333 m long, followed in 1859, and the company gives the combined length of the three-tower complex as 1741.5 m. They are open to visitors as the tężnie area, with viewing terraces, an inhalatorium and the Salt Works Museum. The company also lists a mushroom fountain and, in its history, the thermal-brine swimming pool opened in June 1932 by President Ignacy Mościcki, in a pool building shaped like a ship.

The bathing offer open to day guests is at the Dom Zdrojowy (Spa Hospital No. 4), which the operator says has a modern rehabilitation brine pool with access to a sauna zone, available to guests of the house and to residents and visitors alike. The pool has massage jets, a waterfall and a hoist for disabled bathers; the operator gives the brine concentration as 4.29 per cent and says the pool is open seven days a week. Entry for visitors from outside the house runs on timed one-hour slots: Monday from 15:00 with the last entry 19:40-20:40, Tuesday from 16:10, Wednesday to Saturday from 15:00, and Sunday and public holidays from 10:10 with the last entry 17:10-18:10. Numbers are limited, tickets and passes are bought at the Dom Zdrojowy reception and cover the pool with the steam and Finnish saunas subject to availability, a cap and flip-flops are required, and children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult. Single tickets for pool and sauna are 20 zł for adults and 12 zł for children aged 4 to 16.

The rest of the group is medical: the Markiewicz sanatorium-hotel complex, Spa Hospital No. 1 (Łazienki Uzdrowiskowe), Sanatorium Grażyna, the children's spa hospital and a diabetology centre, taking both privately paying guests and patients referred by the national health fund. The conditions the company states it rehabilitates are locomotor disorders including rheumatic, post-traumatic and congenital ones, nervous-system conditions such as pareses and post-stroke states, circulatory conditions including stable ischaemic heart disease and hypertension of WHO grades I and II, chronic catarrh of the upper respiratory tract, and metabolic diseases including adult diabetes, osteoporosis and obesity. Treatments are prescribed by physicians specialising in spa medicine.