“Faites vos jeux!” – Baden-Baden, characterized by classicist buildings, is as elegant as its casino: green, like the roulette table; glamorous, like the chandeliers in the Florentine Hall; stylish, like the croupiers dressed in tuxedos.
The ball has been rolling quietly there for more than 200 years. Dostoyevsky lost his entire fortune in the Florentine Hall, Tolstoy fared little better. Emperors, kings and artists, maharajas, moguls and mistresses, princes, potentates and prelates: money and power were in this casino. They strolled, drove, dined, cured and gambled in Baden-Baden, the city that became a hotspot for high society from the romantic travel period of the 19th century to the Belle Époque.
Today, however, the term casino always includes a dash of thriller: James Bond and “Casino Royal” immediately come to mind. People like to remember “Casino” with Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone or “21” with Kevin Spacey – even if none of these hit films was shot in Baden-Baden.
Health resorts and spas in Germany are in demand
In the summer of last year, the city, along with Bad Kissingen and Bad Ems, was included in the list of World Heritage Sites: as three of the “Great Spas of Europe”. The name stands for an applicant alliance from a total of eleven traditional European spa towns, which include Baden in Austria, Bath in England, Montecatini in Italy, Spa in Belgium, Vichy in France and Karlsbad, Franzensbad and Marienbad in the Czech Republic.
Source: Infographic WORLD
Neither the healing power of the springs nor the current range of cures or spas were awarded, but rather the historical architectural ambience of the towns, which are still shaped by the spa culture.
When you say cure, the old-fashioned, the fussy and the question often resonates: Who is actually still taking a cure these days? The answer is amazing! According to the Federal Statistical Office, exactly 29,158,433 overnight guests visited the around 350 health resorts and spas in Germany in 2019, before the corona pandemic. Around 25 percent of the German population went on a spa or health holiday in 2019 and thus generated more than a quarter of all overnight stays in Germany.
Incidentally, around 80 percent finance their stay privately, so they take advantage of spa treatments, treatments and therapies in the spa centers and stay in hotels. “People have been focusing more and more on health for years, and not just since Corona. So it is not surprising that for years we have seen increasing demand from all age groups in our state-approved German spas and health resorts,” says Brigitte Goertz-Meissner, President of the German Spas Association.
This increasingly includes young people, mainly because of back problems and chronic illnesses, but increasingly also because of burnout or depression. “The quality requirements for state-approved German spas and health resorts are considered the highest in the world,” says Goertz-Meissner. “China and South Korea, for example, want to develop spas and health resorts in their own country based on the German model.”
Healing springs shaped a new kind of city
The tradition of spa treatment meant that in the 19th century a new type of urban development developed around the healing springs: the noble spa town with stately buildings, long colonnades, round arches and capitals, grand hotels, parks with fountains, galleries and casinos. She shaped the glamorous spa and travel life of the nobility and upper middle class in the 19th century.
And this type of city fascinates to this day, especially since some of the public facilities of the 19th-century spa towns have arrived in the 2020s. Whether in the 4000 square meter Caracalla Therme in Baden-Baden, the twice as large KissSalis Therme in Bad Kissingen or the 6000 square meter Emser Therme – everywhere you will find modern sauna landscapes, pools with different temperatures, innovative treatments such as strawberry wellness or light -Shows: cure meets wellness, tradition meets modernity. After all, bling bling is always part of the business.
The Friedrichsbad in Baden-Baden is a unique Roman-Irish thermal bath
Which: pa/Rainer Hacken/Rainer Hackenberg
In addition, both Baden-Baden and Bad Kissingen and Bad Ems are in attractive surroundings: Whether in the Black Forest, in the Rhön or between the Taunus and Westerwald – the experience in the countryside perfectly complements the spa and wellness stay.
For the younger clientele, many an aging hotel just needs to be brought up to date, comfortable and cool at the same time, with four or five stars, pools and glass-enclosed saunas with a view of the countryside. Because one or the other spa hotel still has its sauna hidden in the dark basement.
Baden-Baden is world class
Baden-Baden is certainly not only among the German baths, but also internationally at the top of the world heritage baths: with the Kurhaus complex, the unique Roman-Irish Friedrichsbad, the parks on Lichtentaler Allee, the modern Museum Frieder Burda, the world-class hotel “Brenner’s Park-Hotel” and of course the casino, which Marlene Dietrich claimed was the most beautiful thing in the world: “I have to know, because I know them all”, the diva justified her judgement.
In the 90-meter-long ambulatory of the drinking hall in Baden-Baden, 14 murals by Jakob Götzenberger can be seen, showing scenes from myths and legends from the region
Source: pa/Jochen Tack
On the eight golf courses in the area and especially at the Iffezheim racecourse, you can also go on a journey through time: the aristocratic style is flourishing. Gentlemen with flapping coattails and dressed-up ladies stagger around for the best view.
And the ladies show what they own – the hat creations vary depending on the sense of mission, the husband’s wallet and one’s own imagination. Who cares about the busy horses running their lungs out? To this day, many a guest has their wardrobe, especially hats, professionally stored at the “Brenners Park-Hotel”.
What distinguishes Bad Kissingen and Bad Ems
Bad Kissingen and Bad Ems are much more provincial and less modern than the spa town on the slopes of the Black Forest, even if Bad Kissingen’s Mayor Dirk Vogel now sees himself “in the Champions League of German cities” with the World Heritage award.
Of course, the regent and arcade building as well as the foyer are great architecture, but Bad Kissingen can hardly keep up with the casino, art and grand hotel. The surrounding Rhön, however, is an often forgotten and less visited wonderful low mountain range with the oldest gliding school in the world on the Wasserkuppe, which at almost a thousand meters is the highest elevation in the Rhön.
The Bad Kissingen foyer was built from 1910 to 1911 by the Munich architect Max Littmann in the form of a three-nave basilica
Source: pa/dpa/Karl-Josef Hildenbrand
Bad Ems was already one of the most famous bathing resorts in Germany in the 18th century, with illustrious visitors such as Kaiser Wilhelm I and Tsar Alexander II of Russia or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Richard Wagner. The Ems casino is even older than the casino in Baden-Baden and Dostoevsky was also a guest at the Ems gaming tables. Kurhaus and “Häcker’s Grand Hotel” on the Ems are impressive, but still lack the last dash of elegance to be a sophisticated world spa in the 2020s, which it undoubtedly once was.
The casino in Bad Ems is even older than the casino in Baden-Baden. Even the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a guest here
What: dpa/dpa/Thomas Frey
In all three cities it all started with water. Mineral springs, hot or cold, gushed out of the earth and the Romans – known for their fondness for bathing – built their thermal baths, as in Baden-Baden and Ems. The water was and is also drunk, for example from Bad Kissingen’s famous Rakoczy spring, one of the city’s seven healing springs. The taste takes a lot of getting used to, but the spa guests swear by the positive effect on respiratory diseases, gastrointestinal problems or states of exhaustion.
Even Bad Ems has 15 mineral springs: at 57 degrees Celsius, the Robert Kampe spring is one of the hottest in Germany. Incidentally, the ingredients are also in the Ems pastilles. After the water has evaporated, 3.5 grams of mineral salts remain per liter, which have been pressed into beneficial lozenges for almost 150 years and are not only appreciated by opera singers. Baden-Baden does not have something to offer.
Further information: baden-baden.de; badkissingen-erleben.de; badems-nassau.info
This article was first published in November 2021.