Georgian gentility: Steaming waters and a glorious skyline still draw basking beauties to ever-elegant Bath
- Bathing in Bath’s thermal waters has been popular since Roman times
- You can take the waters at the The Gainsborough hotel, at the spa or in a suite
- But there is more to the city than its springs — it is the perfect weekend break
People still come to Bath to bathe. There’s a queue outside the Thermae Bath Spa, where you can enjoy the steaming waters and city skyline.
Our hotel, The Gainsborough, is the only hotel in the city to pipe the thermal waters into its spa and suites.
It was once a doctor’s house, then a hospital in the 1820s with a chapel, before lying derelict and finally being rescued by YTL Hotels.
Regency feel: The Gainsborough’s smart Spa Village pipes in warming thermal water
Cocktail o’clock: A reviving drink in The Gainsborough’s bar is just the tickets after a spa day
They’ve spent £35million and it’s swish with elegant lighting, sumptuous textiles and a Regency feel.
It’s the ideal spot from which to explore the Roman Baths.
Here, you’ll realise human nature hasn’t changed in 1,500 years.
Curses written on lead or pewter were thrown into the Sacred Spring for the Goddess to answer.
One reads: ‘May the person who has stolen Vilbia from me become as liquid as water.’
Springs in the city: The elegant Roman Baths are still a popular visitor attraction
The Abbey nearby is worth visiting for its East Window alone, which shows 56 scenes from the life of Christ. Destroyed in the Blitz, it was painstakingly restored.
At The Holburne Museum, you get a feel for the genteel life of Georgian Bath.
Tea was newly fashionable and they did things properly with spoons made from Indian Ocean seashells and silver cow creamers.
The Pieter Bruegel exhibition, with two recently attributed paintings from The Holburne’s own collection, is on now.
Glorious: Bath Abbey, with its amazing stained glass windows, presides over the skyline
Josiah Wedgwood, who had a showroom in Bath, described the shops as ‘richer and more extravagant in their shew than London’.
That still holds, but instead my boyfriend marches me to the Bath Skyline, a six-mile walk up above the city.
On a spring day, it’s wonderful. Back in town, we tuck into pepperoni pizza, safe in the knowledge that those curing spa waters will put everything right in the morning.