Termas das Caldas da Rainha
- Location
- Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
- Water type
- bicarbonate
- Temperature
- 35 °C
- pH
- 7.2
Water profile
Soothing — neither hot nor cold, perfect balance.
Loaded with major ions — the essential minerals (Ca, Mg).
Soft water — natural, classic buoyancy.
According to founding legend, Queen Dona Leonor of Aviz, wife of King João II, came upon locals bathing in hot springs along the road to Batalha in 1484. Intrigued, she bathed there herself and, finding relief, ordered in 1485 the construction of a thermal hospital on the site to give bathers better conditions than the open-air pools they had used before. The town that grew up around this thermal complex would later take its name directly from these waters — Caldas da Rainha, "the Queen's hot springs" — and the hospital she founded is considered the oldest thermal hospital still operating anywhere in the world.
The institution later passed under the stewardship of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, which continues to run it today as part of its broader mission of social and health-related welfare. Centuries after its founding, the complex still draws on the same springs that first caught a queen's attention, blending Renaissance-era heritage with a working thermal establishment in the heart of the town she helped create.