Terme Bad Mergentheim

Terme Bad Mergentheim draws chlorurated and sulfated mineral springs in the Main Tauber valley of Baden-Wurttemberg, a town whose mineral waters were discovered accidentally in 1826 when a shepherd's flock was observed licking a brackish seep in the meadow, initiating a rapid development of spa infrastructure that transformed a quiet market town into one of southern Germany's principal nineteenth-century resorts. Bad Mergentheim was for three centuries the residence of the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order, the German military-religious brotherhood that carved a Baltic crusader state out of Prussia and the Eastern Baltic during the medieval period, and the Deutschordensschloss, the Grand Masters' palace at the heart of the old town, today houses an outstanding museum of the Order's history. The sulfated chlorurated waters, long part of the local drinking and bathing tradition, flow in a town whose medieval heritage is matched by the Romantic landscape of the Main and Tauber valleys, one of the most picturesque regions of southwestern Germany.