Baile Herculane: Reviving Romania’s Forgotten Spa Town
The Cerna is a short but important river in Southwestern Romania that carved its way through deep gorges over millions of years in the Southern Carpathians.
It is within the narrow yet steep-sided Cerna valley that the improbable town of Băile Herculane placed its roots over 1,900 years ago. Its wild remoteness and lack of winter sunshine would beg anyone the question why a people would choose to carve out an existence here, but the answer is immediately clear to anyone who walks along the banks of the Cerna river where the smell of sulphur is redolent in the air.
Legend beholds that the mythological god Hercules rested in this valley and bathed in its thermal waters, giving the town its namesake. Fact or fiction, it is historically documented that Băile Herculane was the favourite bathing spot of both Emperor and Empress of Austria (and later Hungary) Elisabeth ‘Sissi’ and Franz Josef.
Each country that is home to hot springs also has its own unique bathing culture that grows around them, and nowhere is that more prominent than in Băile Herculane, Romania’s answer to Budapest.
These days the springs here are mainly used by the elderly and retired, who spend their state-allotted holiday vouchers on accommodation to seek cures from the mineral waters.
This town, once host to emperors and mythological gods, has fallen out of favour with Romanians since the fall of communism in the late 1980’s, but a revival is on its way, spearheaded by some of the town’s youngest visitors.
It was on a cool October morning we met Oana Chirilă by the gates of the rusty iron behemoth which has dominated the town’s skyline -and conversations- for the past two decades. We were here to film a segment for Europe Hidden Hot Springs Journey, which we were particularly excited about as it combined two of our great loves in life: hot springs, and abandoned buildings.
Lucy during a filming segment in the Baile Neptune building.
Băile Neptun is a 1200m long eclectic-style building that was once the epicentre of the town’s thermal tourism, but now stands on the brink of collapse. Standing between this iconic building and its fate are a group of young, ambitious architects from nearby Timisoara, who founded the Herculane Project.
As the story goes, on a visit from the city, Oana and her student friends were sitting in front of the Neptune Baths, listening to all of the passers-by complain about the state of it.
“Why isn’t someone doing something?” they wondered aloud. And then with the fiery young ambition of university students, they decided: “Let’s be the ones who break the chain of not doing anything for this place.”
Contrasting hallways of Baile Neptun.
She explains to us the bureaucracy of land ownership, funding and municipal red tape that has since held them back on their project as she unlocks a small padlock on an otherwise huge door. All they’ve been allowed to do thus far is undertake emergency repairs on the building to prevent it from falling into further disrepair; in the 5 years since the project begun, no actual renovations have taken place. The frustration is clear.
But when we step into the grand, frescoed lobby with its ornate ceramic fountain (made by the Hungarians) it’s immediately obvious where the passion to save this building lies. The building was completed in 1886, according to the plans of the Hungarian architect Alpár Ignat, following a national architectural competition organized by the Ministry of Finance. 7 projects were submitted in the competition; Băile Neptun was the victor.
The grand frescoed lobby with fountain.
The completed bath house was designed with 70 treatment tubs, 10 stone tubs, 2 saunas, 2 inhalation rooms and a waiting room. At its peak 100 people could’ve been simultaneously treated. The high tin roofs, domed or pyramid shaped, were completed with dormers and ironwork decorations, along with an ornate cast iron bridge to cross the Cerna and link the building to the main street of the town.
Treatment baths.
The lobby leads onto two symmetrical hallways with grand domed ceilings and half-moon windows, each housing treatment cabins with baths that could be filled with hot water at the turn of a tap. It was in one of these cabins the emperor Franz Josef liked to bathe, and we were shown a wall plaque commemorating his place.
The bathing cabin of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef.
It is undeniably one of the grandest buildings we’ve ever had the opportunity to photograph. In the south wing, painted an eye-watering shade of coral, a large Latin inscription above the door reads: the waters sacred to Hercules. In this same hallway chunks of plaster crack and crumble, and plants grow out of holes in the surface. A pile of wood lies spare, having been used to construct a temporary roof to hold off the deluge of rain. From here we can see just what a monumental task the team are undertaking, a project that will likely supersede them all. But if they don’t step up, then who will? The building will be left to rust and crumble away, and Romania will lose an irreplaceable part of its history.
Latin inscriptions on the walls and roof.
Now on the annual list of the 7 most endangered buildings in Europe, Băile Neptun still has a long road to recovery ahead of it. But Oana has bright visions for its future, which she recounts as we pass back through the lobby and into the opposite wing.
The goal is not just to restore the spa complex, but also to create a commercial and social hub with a museum, a book store and a coffee shop, to put the Neptune Bath back in its place at the heart of the community.
The domed hallway ceilings, north wing.
The walls of the north wing we now find ourselves walking through are a harmony of sweeping roofs in cream and grey; this, Oana tells us, is the original colour of the building, unlike the other hallways which were repainted in the early 2000’s. Even the frescoes in the lobby aren’t original, instead painted by imitators in the 70’s, as was the fashion then. But standing at the edge of the grand white and red marble pool at the end of the wing it’s easy to imagine this as a place of healing again.
Large swimming pool in the building’s north wing.
We ascend to the upper levels which have suffered damage from rockslides; being built into a sheer mountain face means there are more elements than just the weather to contend with. Creeper leaves, flush red with autumn, cling onto the exposed brick facade which Oana shows us are inscribed with names and dates, some in surprisingly ornate letters.
“These were people who seeked treatment here. Mostly, initially, were people from the military service, since Herculane was on the border of the former Empire. After that, tourists, seeing the carves bricks, started to continue the process. Thats why there are also recent dates.”
Brick inscriptions on the outside wall.
It was clear to see that so many generations of history dwell in this building, from the brick inscriptions to the 70’s frescoes to the intriguing mixture of shells that make up the outer pillars (believed to be sediments from the Pannonian Sea that existed millions of years ago); this building was more than just an eyesore and a local headache, it was a living collage of Romanian history. And it was too precious to be lost to neglect.
Looking out at the mountains across the newly replaced tin roof between walls of crumbling brick, we promised to return when the building was restored, to toast in this very spot with champagne.
If anything was going to pull this building back from the brink of collapse, it would be the fire and passion of this group of young architects.
Oana Chirilă
Co-founder and president of the Herculane Project.
Credit: @_oanachirila_
You can find more information and make a donation to the Herculane Project here.
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