Bardejovské kúpele

Bardejovské Kúpele is a spa settlement of its own in north-eastern Slovakia, set in a narrow valley of conifer forest above the town of Bardejov. Mineral springs here were first written about in 1247; the resort's great period was the nineteenth century, when it drew Hungarian nobility and, in 1895, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, whose stay is still marked by a museum and a themed apartment in the Alžbeta house. Ten springs rise within the small inner spa district. The water is naturally medicinal, weakly to moderately mineralised, of the bicarbonate-chloride sodium type, ferruginous and carbonated, cold and hypotonic, with a raised boric-acid content, and it is piped into a roofed, tempered colonnade where it is drunk rather than bathed in. Eight named springs — Hlavný, Lekársky, Klára, Alžbeta, Napoleon, František, Anna and the Kolonádny — serve those drinking cures, which are directed mainly at stomach, gall-bladder, liver, pancreas and intestinal complaints.

For bathing, the address is the Wellness Spa Ozón, open to day visitors from the whole region and not only to spa patients. Its pool world holds three basins. The relaxation pool is the largest at 21 by 11 metres, 1.20 metres deep and kept at 28-30°C, with a water bowl, a water cannon, wall hydromassage jets, a floor bubble bed, a counter-current channel and LED lighting built into the walls. A quiet pool of 4 by 11 metres, also 1.20 metres deep, runs warmer at 32-34°C and has a tube lounger and an air-bubble bench. A children's pool of 6.5 by 2.5 metres is 20 centimetres deep at 30-32°C, with a small connecting slide, a water hedgehog and a water bell.

The sauna world alongside it has four cabins of different characters: a dry sauna at the usual 80-100°C with 5-15 per cent humidity, a steam sauna at 40-50°C and humidity approaching 100 per cent, an inhalation cabin at 40-50°C dosed with essential oils or herbal extracts such as eucalyptus, mint and camomile, and an infrared cabin at 40-60°C for guests who cannot take high air temperatures. The pools open Monday from 13:00 and Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00, both until 20:30; the sauna world starts at 13:00 every day. Visitors over 60 get 28 per cent off the entry price on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, and the ticket validates parking in the resort's central car park.