The Great Spa Towns of Europe is a transnational serial UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in July 2021. It comprises eleven exceptional spa towns across 7 countries, and represents a unique cultural phenomenon and urban typology. The European Spa Tradition - a complex urban, social and cultural phenomenon - has its roots in antiquity, but gained its highest expression from around 1700 to the 1930s. Each spa town developed around mineral springs which were the catalyst for an innovative model of spatial organisation which included therapeutic and recreational landscapes dedicated to curative, therapeutic and social functions. These fashionable resorts of health, leisure and sociability created architectural prototypes and an urban typology which had no earlier parallel. They were pioneers in what we now recognise a modern tourism. The towns which form the Great Spa Towns of Europe World Heritage Site are: Baden bei Wien, Austria, the "Spa of Emperors" Spa, Belgium, the “Café of Europe” Františkovy Lázně, Czech Republic the “European model Spa” Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, “Europe’s open-air Salon” Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic, “Grand harmony with Nature” Vichy, France, "Queen of the Spa Towns" Bad Ems, Germany, the "Picturesque Imperial Spa" Bad Kissingen, Germany, "Between Classicism and Modernity" Baden-Baden, Germany, the "Summer Capital of Europe" Montecatini Terme, Italy, the "Garden Spa of Europe" City of Bath, United Kingdom, the "Georgian Spa City"
