Thermes de Plombières - Les Dames Romaines

Thermes de Plombières-les-Bains Les Dames Romaines in the Vosges department of Lorraine, France, offers chloride mineral spring bathing in the spa town where history's most consequential thermal meeting occurred: in July 1858, Napoleon III and Count Cavour of Sardinia secretly negotiated what became known as the Plombières Agreement in the bathing rooms of this Vosges spa town, agreeing to a Franco-Sardinian alliance that would expel Austria from northern Italy and create the conditions for Italian national unification—a diplomatic negotiation that literally changed the map of Europe, conducted between the emperor and the count while taking the waters of this modest spa town. The Roman thermal tradition at Plombières extends back to the first century CE, and the Dames Romaines bath has preserved Roman-era bathing infrastructure beneath its contemporary facilities. This is a spa town where the mineral waters carry the weight of diplomatic history alongside their therapeutic mineral benefits.