Thermes de Luxeuil Extension

Thermes de Luxeuil-les-Bains in the Haute-Saône department of Franche-Comté, France, offers chloride and sulfated mineral spring bathing in one of France's oldest and most historically layered spa towns, where the thermal waters were celebrated by Pliny the Elder and later developed by Saint Colomban, the Irish missionary monk who founded the Abbey of Luxeuil in 590 CE—one of the most important monastic centers of early medieval Europe, whose scriptoria produced illuminated manuscripts of extraordinary quality and whose influence spread across the entire Carolingian world. The magnificent sixteenth-century cloister of the abbey, described by historians as one of the most beautiful in France, provides a setting of extraordinary cultural and architectural depth that makes Luxeuil-les-Bains exceptional even among France's already culturally rich thermal towns. The chloride and sulfated mineral waters continue a therapeutic tradition of unbroken continuity from Roman thermal culture through Irish monastic healing to the modern French balneotherapy tradition.