CountryBest May – September

Germany

A spa culture that predates the country itself, still run with the same clinical seriousness.

The Kur towns — Baden-Baden chief among them — turned "taking the waters" into a centuries-old institution, with rules, rituals and a dress code most countries dropped a hundred years ago. It's not relaxed in the usual sense. It's precise, and that's the point.

Places in Germany

Town

Baden-Baden

A spa town so devoted to bathing that its own name just means "baths, baths."

City

Kronberg

A half-timbered Taunus town built around the hilltop castle a Prussian empress turned into her own home.

Logged in Germany

Thermal bath4.2(1,848)

Friedrichsbad

Baden-Baden, Germany

A 19th-century Roman-Irish bathing palace running a seventeen-station ritual through domed, tiled halls.

Palace hotel4.6(1,725)

Schlosshotel Kronberg

Kronberg, Germany

Kaiserin Victoria's private castle in the Taunus hills, built as her widow's retirement home and still furnished with pieces from the family's own collection.

Mentioned in

Palace hotel4.6(1,725)

Schlosshotel Kronberg

Kronberg, Germany

Kaiserin Victoria's private castle in the Taunus hills, built as her widow's retirement home and still furnished with pieces from the family's own collection.