Thermal baths

Switzerland has been in the bathing business since the Romans, who came for the springs at Baden and Bad Ragaz. It is the best thing to do here in bad weather, and the best thing to do after a day on a mountain.

Where to go

Therme Vals

The famous one, and genuinely a piece of architecture rather than a leisure centre. Peter Zumthor built it in 1996 out of 60,000 slabs of local quartzite, and it is a listed monument — dim, silent, and organised as a sequence of chambers at different temperatures, including one you swim into through a curtain of water and one that is entirely dark.

It is in a remote valley in Graubünden, entry is limited, and outside guests are restricted to certain hours. Book. It is not a family outing and children are limited by age.

Leukerbad

The largest thermal resort in the Alps, in the Valais, with several bath complexes fed by springs that deliver 3.9 million litres a day at 51 °C.

The setting is the point: you sit in hot water outdoors, in winter, with a 600-metre cliff face directly above you and snow falling. From here the Gemmi Pass cable car goes up to a walking area at 2,350 m.

Bad Ragaz

The grand old spa, fed from the Tamina gorge where the water emerges at 36.5 °C. The gorge itself can be visited on a walkway into a slot in the rock, and the old bath house at the bottom is a museum.

Smart, expensive, and the most “resort” of the Swiss spas.

Bogn Engiadina, Scuol

In the Lower Engadin, with mineral water from the local springs and an Irish-Roman circuit — a fixed sequence of rooms and temperatures done over about two hours, with an attendant keeping you to it.

Baden

The Roman one, half an hour from Zurich, with the hottest and most mineral-rich springs in Switzerland at 47 °C. The new Fortyseven baths, designed by Mario Botta, opened in 2021 and put a modern bath house back into a town that had lost the habit.

The closest proper thermal bath to Zurich, and reachable on an ordinary train ticket.

Lavey-les-Bains

The hottest spring in Switzerland at 70 °C, in canton Vaud near the Rhône, and rather less known than the others.

The rule nobody tells you

In the sauna area, you take everything off.

Swiss and German-speaking sauna culture is textile-free and it is not optional: wearing a swimming costume in the sauna is unhygienic by local standards and you will be asked to remove it. You take a towel to sit on. Most sauna areas are mixed, some have women-only hours.

This applies only to the sauna area. In the thermal pools themselves you wear a swimming costume like anywhere else, and the two zones are clearly separated.

Nobody is looking at you, everybody is Swiss about it, and the visitors who find this difficult are almost entirely those who did not know in advance.

Practical

• Take flip-flops, a towel and a bathrobe. All are rentable, at a price that makes bringing your own worthwhile.
• Entry is usually by time block — two hours, three, or a day — and you are charged on exit by a wristband.
• Book Vals and the smaller ones, particularly at weekends and in winter.
• Combine with a mountain day. Bad Ragaz sits under Pizol, Leukerbad under the Gemmi, Scuol in ski country — an afternoon in hot water after a morning walking is the correct order.

Several are covered or discounted by regional passes; see tickets and passes.