Évaux-les-Bains

Évaux-les-Bains in the Creuse département of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region draws from oligomineral springs rising at 54°C from granite bedrock in the Combrailles plateau of the Massif Central, in a spa tradition documented since the Gallo-Roman period when the springs of Aquis Calidis were developed as a bathing complex serving the rural Gallic population of this ancient granite landscape. The thermal water of Évaux is appreciated for relaxation and well-being in an accredited establishment whose location in one of France's least populated and least visited départements gives the spa experience a quality of authentic provincial calm increasingly rare in an age of mass wellness tourism. The surrounding Creuse landscape, celebrated by the Barbizon landscape painters and by George Sand who used the Combrailles countryside as the setting for several of her Berrichon novels, provides a backdrop of melancholy pastoral beauty that gives this quiet thermal station a distinctly literary atmosphere.