Baile Herculane Grand Hotel

Băile Herculane, in the Cerna River valley of the Caraș-Severin county of western Romania, is one of Europe's oldest continuously operating thermal spa resorts, its mineral springs documented since Roman times when Emperor Trajan established the Thermae Herculi baths here, and the Habsburg Empire subsequently developing it into one of the most fashionable spa resorts in Central Europe — its grand nineteenth-century hotels and colonnaded mineral water pavilions creating an elegantly decayed Belle Epoque spa townscape in a dramatic limestone canyon setting. Baile Herculane Grand Hotel draws on sodium-rich thermal mineral waters from the geothermal resources of the Cerna River valley hydrothermal zone, offering thermal bathing in the tradition of one of the most historically distinguished spa destinations in southeastern Europe, whose waters have been celebrated within a long thermal tradition since antiquity. The magnificent Habsburg-era Grand Hotel's Historicist architecture, the Roman thermal ruins and archaeological museum, and the extraordinary Cerna River gorge limestone scenery with its rare endemic flora protected in the Domogled-Cerna Valley National Park create one of Europe's most historically layered and scenically dramatic thermal spa destinations.