about bath

Bath is a World Heritage Site and a major centre for tourism, with over one million staying visitors and 3.8 million day visitors to the city each year. It is home to Bath Rugby, internationally-renowned music and literature festivals, and has been a spa and healing destination for millennia.

The site of Bath's main hot spring was treated as a shrine by the Iron Age Britons, and was dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva. The first spa, Aquae Sulis, was established by the Romans sometime in the AD 60s, about 20 years after they had arrived in Britain.

They built baths and a temple on the surrounding hills of Bath in the valley of the River Avon around the hot springs. The bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years. After the failure of Roman authority in the first decade of the 5th century, the baths fell into disrepair and were eventually lost due to silting up.

Much later during the 18th century Bath became the leading centre of fashionable life in England, which led to a major expansion that left a heritage of exemplary Georgian architecture crafted from Bath Stone.