Spa, Baden bei Wien, Karlovy Vary, Montecatini Terme · Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy
The Town That Gave "Spa" Its Name (And 3 Others Worth the Trip)
Beyond Budapest and Baden-Baden lies a historic network of European spa towns — including the town that gave "spa" its name. Here are four worth building a slow, water-centered trip around.
Published September 26, 2026
Wellness travel keeps climbing every trend report for 2026, and most of the coverage funnels straight to the same two names: Budapest's bathhouses and Baden-Baden's Roman-era pools. Both deserve the attention. But Europe has an entire historic network of thermal towns behind them — including the actual town the word "spa" comes from — that barely register in most travel content. Here are four worth building a slow, water-centered trip around.
Spa, Belgium: The Town, Literally, Behind the Word
Every time someone says they're going to "the spa," they're unknowingly referencing a small town in the Belgian Ardennes. Spa's iron-rich mineral springs were famous enough by the Renaissance that the town's name became the generic term for any mineral-water health resort across Europe — a linguistic export most visitors never learn about until they're standing in the town itself. Peter the Great came to drink the waters in 1717; Victor Hugo returned repeatedly and wrote about the town in his letters.
Spa is also home to the Waux-Hall, built in 1763 and considered the oldest casino in Europe, predating Monte Carlo by over a century. A funicular still carries visitors up to the Thermes de Spa, where the original copper bathing tubs used by 18th-century aristocracy remain part of the modern spa circuit, and the surrounding forest paths were deliberately laid out in the 1700s as part of the "cure" — walking prescribed alongside the water-drinking, a wellness routine that predates the concept of a fitness retreat by two centuries. The town also gives its name to the nearby Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, arguably better known globally today for Formula 1 than for mineral water.
Baden bei Wien, Austria: Beethoven's Actual Summer Office
Twenty minutes by train from Vienna, Baden bei Wien was known to the Romans as Aquae, and its sulfuric springs — flowing from fourteen sources at temperatures between 24°C and 36°C — made it a fashionable retreat for Habsburg nobility by the 19th century. What sets Baden apart from other imperial spa towns is how much serious music history happened inside it: Beethoven spent multiple summers here specifically to compose, and the house where he worked on part of his Ninth Symphony still stands, open to visitors who expect a museum and instead find a modest apartment.
Baden's Casino, housed in a Belle Époque building considered one of Europe's most beautiful gaming halls, sits a short walk from the Josefsbad, a bathing facility dating to 1804 that still operates using the same thermal source. The town's Biedermeier architecture — pastel facades, wrought-iron balconies — has stayed remarkably intact, giving Baden the feel of a 19th-century resort that simply never got the memo to modernize its skyline.
Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic: Where Goethe Took the Cure and James Bond Took a Casino
Founded in the 14th century after Emperor Charles IV reportedly discovered its hot springs while hunting, Karlovy Vary — known internationally by its German name, Carlsbad — became the single most fashionable spa address in Europe by the 1800s, hosting Goethe, Beethoven, Gogol, Casanova, and Tsar Peter the Great across different decades. The town's five ornate colonnades, covered walkways built over the springs so visitors could stroll and drink mineral water regardless of weather, remain the most recognizable image of the town today.
Karlovy Vary's stranger export is edible: the karlovarské oplatky, a thin wafer first baked before 1800 specifically as a snack light enough for patients between treatments, now sold on nearly every street corner and stamped with an image of the town's founding stag legend. The town also produces Becherovka, an herbal liqueur launched in 1807 that started as a digestive tonic and is now a genuine Czech export. Film fans may recognize the grand Hotel Pupp without knowing it: most of Casino Royale's Montenegro casino scenes were actually filmed here, standing in for a country the production never visited.
Montecatini Terme, Italy: The Spa Town Hiding in Tuscany's Shadow
Sitting just north of Florence, Montecatini Terme rarely makes it onto standard Tuscany itineraries, which almost entirely bypass thermal towns in favor of hill villages and wine country. Its therapeutic waters have been documented since Roman times, but the town's current form — grand belle époque spa buildings set among olive groves — dates mostly to the 19th century, when it became one of Italy's most fashionable retreats.
The town's most charming detail is mechanical rather than mineral: a funicular railway, with carriages nicknamed Gigio and Gigia, still carries visitors up to the medieval hilltop village of Montecatini Alto, delivering panoramic Tuscan views as a built-in part of what was originally a health cure, not a tourist ride.
Why These Four Stay Off Most Wellness Lists
Budapest and Baden-Baden dominate wellness travel coverage mostly because they're the biggest names attached to the trend, not because they're the only options with real depth. Spa, Baden bei Wien, Karlovy Vary, and Montecatini Terme were doing exactly what "wellness travel" claims to have invented — slow mornings, mineral water, deliberate walking routes, culture folded into rest — two centuries before the phrase existed. The content gap here isn't a lack of substance. It's a lack of anyone writing about towns whose golden age happened to be the 1800s instead of last year.