Therme Bad Wildbad

Therme Bad Wildbad draws bicarbonated mineral springs in the Enz valley of the northern Black Forest, where geothermal water at 38 degrees Celsius has been channelled for thermal bathing since the fifteenth century, when the spa was patronised by the Wurttemberg court and the formula of thermal immersion combined with forest walking was established in the pine and silver fir woods that cover the surrounding hillsides to an unbroken horizon. The Black Forest is Germany's largest continuous forested massif and the literary homeland of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale tradition, its dense dark spruce stands, its watermills, its cuckoo clocks, and its half-timbered villages providing the visual and imaginative raw material for Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel in a landscape that has changed less than most of central Europe since the medieval period. The warm mineral springs of Bad Wildbad, long associated with relaxation and well-being, complement the refreshing forest air in a spa town whose Black Forest setting represents the classic German formula of bathing and nature at its most evocative.