Bath

A town of rich splendour and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Bath is the best-preserved Georgian city in Britain built among the trees and hillsides of the Avon Valley.

A Spa town dating before Roman Times, Bath was founded in about 850 BC around its hot springs and has since been regarded as a sacred sight by all who have settled the area. Bath is a town of stunning architectural proportions with buildings of honey coloured stone dating from the 18^th Century and beyond.

In the first century the Romans established the settlement of Aquae Sulis, leaving a rich legacy that is quite unparalleled. In Roman times the city was regarded as one of the finest bathing stations in the Roman Empire drawing visitors from across Europe to sample the waters. Today the fabulously preserved Roman Baths and Pump Room are one of the city’s main attractions, as well as the open air Great Bath and complex there is an adjacent museum housing artefacts excavated from the site including the head of Minerva. The elegant Pump Room dates back to the Georgian renaissance of the city, a place for lavish entertainment and location of a modern spa complex where visitors can take to the waters.

Beside the Baths, along the banks of the River Avon is the beautiful Bath Abbey. Though the building dates from the late 15^th and early 16^th Centuries an Abbey was founded here as early as 676 and in the 10^th Century the Saxon King Edgar was crowned here as the first King of all of England . The abbey as it is now was built by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, one of the most powerful men in the English Church during Elizabethan times and is the last of England’s great abbey churches and a most magnificent building.

In the 18^th Century, Bath grew into a fashionable Regency Spa town under the influence of socialite Beau Nash and celebrated architects John Wood and his son John Wood II. Bath began to attract the main players of high society from Royalty to wealthy merchants and famous names like Thomas Gainsborough and Jane Austin who based two of her novels on Bath.

Georgian architectural features are everywhere throughout the city, terraces and crescents are embellished with Ionic and Corinthian columns, sculptured garlands and friezes and overlook polite communal greens. The most famous of these are the King’s Circus, a circular terrace of identical houses and the Royal Crescent, a great terrace arc overlooking the valley. Another fabulous addition of this era is Pulteney Bridge, modelled on the famous Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

Today’s Bath is a very grand and affluent town as much famed for its excellent selection of exclusive shops selling designer jewellery and stylish fashions as it is for its beauty and opulent decadence. Bath, along with Rome and Florence is one of only three World Heritage Cities in the World.