Thermes d'Amélie-les-Bains

Thermes d'Amelie-les-Bains draws sulphurous thermal springs in the Vallee du Tech of the French Pyrenees, a narrow mountain valley that forms the thermal and cultural heart of French Catalonia, where the springs have been exploited since Roman times and the legions who built the Via Domitia used the sulphurous baths for the treatment of combat wounds. The Tech valley and the surrounding Conflent region are the homeland of the Catalan identity on the French side of the Pyrenees, where sardane dances, pink limestone Romanesque churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the Catalan language spoken alongside French give the communities of this mountain corridor a cultural distinctiveness that survived the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 which transferred the region from Spain to France. The sulphurous waters of Amelie, prescribed principally for ear, nose, and throat conditions as well as rheumatic disorders, have been visited by French soldiers, civil servants, and Parisian convalescents for three centuries in a spa town that feels simultaneously Catalan, Pyrenean, and republican French.