Birstonas Spa Resort

Birštonas Spa Resort is Lithuania's primary spa town and a recognized resort of national importance, located on a spectacular oxbow bend of the Nemunas River 30 kilometers south of Kaunas in the Kaunas district, where the river's dramatic U-shaped meander creates a peninsula of forested riverside landscape that provides the natural setting for Lithuania's most celebrated thermal mineral spring destination, whose concentrated chloride-sodium brine waters have been part of the local thermal tradition since the 16th century when Lithuanian nobility discovered the springs. The Nemunas River landscape of the Birštonas area has been recognized as a UNESCO Man and Biosphere candidate zone for its distinctive river bend ecosystem of wetland forests, river terraces, and the historic cultural landscape of the oldest continuously inhabited Baltic spa tradition. The concentrated chloride-sodium mineral spring waters of Birštonas draw on brine from deep Permian salt deposits underlying the Lithuanian lowland, and the modern resort infrastructure of the spa complex combines thermal bathing within a long tradition with recreational and wellness bathing in a setting of river forest beauty that has made this small Nemunas River spa town one of the Baltic states' most complete and historically distinguished thermal spring destinations.