Terme dei Papi

Terme dei Papi at Viterbo in the Lazio region of central Italy occupies a thermal bathing site of extraordinary historical continuity, where calcium-rich sulphurous spring water rising at 58°C from volcanic sources beneath the Etruscan city of Viterbo has been used by popes, emperors, cardinals, and medieval pilgrims since at least the twelfth century when the papal court relocated here from Rome during the turbulent struggles of the medieval papacy, establishing the terme as the preferred bathing facility of some of the most powerful figures in medieval Christendom. The large outdoor pool, one of Europe's largest open-air thermal pools fed by natural spring water, provides bathing in the same volcanic mineral water that Dante Alighieri mentioned in the Inferno and that Michelangelo sketched in drawings now preserved in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, making Terme dei Papi one of the most literally and figuratively storied thermal bathing sites in Western civilization. The medieval papal city of Viterbo itself, with its perfectly preserved papal palace, its loggia of the pontifical palace, and its extraordinary concentration of Romanesque and Gothic religious architecture in the medieval quarter of San Pellegrino, creates a cultural setting of incomparable historical richness for these ancient spring waters.