Kúpele Dudince

Kupele Dudince runs the spa quarter of Dudince, a small town in the Banska Bystrica region and the southernmost of Slovakia's spa resorts. The draw is the local mineral water, which the operator describes as highly mineralised and carrying an unusual combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide - a composition it credits with treating musculoskeletal, cardiovascular and neurological conditions at the same time. The springs were first written up in 1549, in Juraj Wernher's account of the remarkable waters of Hungary, and again by Matej Bel in 1742; specialists from Vienna surveyed them around 1890, and from 1894 they were officially recognised as medicinal. Early in the twentieth century the water was bottled and shipped as far as America and Egypt.

For a visitor who wants to bathe rather than undergo a course of treatment, the site divides into two halves. Inside the Rubin treatment house, on the first floor, is the mineral pool proper: 8.4 by 7 metres, 1.1 metres deep, held at 34 degrees, and explicitly a sitting pool - guests are asked to sit still rather than swim or stir the water, and to leave jewellery behind, since the mineral water can blacken it. It is normally part of a prescribed treatment, but out of season it opens to the general public on Sundays. On the same floor the Wellnea vital world adds an indoor whirlpool relaxation pool at 32 degrees with massage jets, dry and steam saunas, an infrared cabin, a tepidarium with salt walls and a two-person relaxation tub; non-residents can use it Monday to Thursday from 14:00 to 21:00. A 25 by 12 metre outdoor pool at 28 degrees runs from March to October but is reserved for guests staying in the three houses.

The public bathing venue is the Dudinka summer lido, roughly 300 metres from the treatment houses and named after the water fairy of the local legend. It was rebuilt from the ground up in 2007 and holds four pools: a 25 by 12.5 metre recreation pool 1.30 metres deep at 26 to 28 degrees; an attraction pool at 28 degrees taking the run-out of a toboggan, a family slide and a jetted water channel; a children's pool no deeper than 40 centimetres at 30 degrees; and a second sitting mineral pool filled daily with the Dudince healing water at 33 to 34 degrees, restricted to guests aged 15 and over for a maximum of thirty minutes. Water temperatures across the lido are quoted as 26 to 34 degrees. Every slide and jet in the grounds is included in the entry price; only the mineral pool carries a surcharge.

The resort as it stands today grew in stages: the first spa house opened in 1951, the Rubin treatment house in 1966, the Kristal house in 1970 and Smaragd in 1978, with the present company taking its name in 2003. The lido operates from June to September and the wellness centre year round, so what is open depends heavily on the season.