Roman baths, Georgian crescents and the only natural hot springs in Britain: Bath is a whole city built for looking at, and for a long soak.
Few cities anywhere pack so much into so small a space. Bath sits in a bowl of green hills beside the River Avon, and almost every street in the centre is built from the same honey coloured stone, which glows warm in the late afternoon and makes the whole place look as if it has been lit for a film. The entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of very few in the world where the honour covers a whole city rather than a single building.
Two eras shaped it. The Romans found the hot springs and built a temple and a great bathing complex around them, and some seventeen centuries later the Georgians turned Bath into the most fashionable resort in England, laying out the terraces, crescents and assembly rooms that still define it. This guide takes you through the six things we would put on any first visit, with the practical detail that makes a day here go smoothly, and ideas for a second day if you can stay.
1. The Roman Baths
The Roman Baths are the reason Bath exists, and they are among the best preserved Roman remains anywhere in northern Europe. Hot water rises from deep underground here at around 46 degrees, more than a million litres of it every day, and it has done so for thousands of years. The Romans called the town Aquae Sulis and built a temple to the goddess Sulis Minerva beside the spring, then a series of baths of rising heat that people travelled across the empire to use.
The centrepiece is the Great Bath, a large green pool still lined with the lead the Romans laid, open to the sky and usually steaming gently. The columns and statues of emperors on the terrace above it are Victorian additions, but step down to the water’s edge and you are standing on the original Roman pavement. Below street level the museum winds through the remains of the temple, the changing rooms, the plunge pools and the heated floors, with the sacred spring itself bubbling up in a deep orange pool coloured by the iron in the water.
Look out for the gilt bronze head of Minerva, one of the finest Roman objects found in Britain, and for the curse tablets: small sheets of lead on which Roman visitors scratched requests to the goddess to punish whoever had stolen their cloak or their money. They are one of the most human things in any museum in the country. Allow at least two hours, and pick up the audio guide, which is included and genuinely good.
The water in the Roman Baths is not treated, so you cannot swim in it or touch it, but you can taste spa water from the fountain in the Pump Room next door. The baths are busiest from late morning to mid afternoon, especially at weekends and in school holidays, so go at opening time or in the last couple of hours of the day, and book a timed ticket online in advance. In high summer they often stay open into the evening, when the Great Bath is lit by torches, and that is the most atmospheric time of all.
2. Thermae Bath Spa
If the Roman Baths show you what the springs meant two thousand years ago, Thermae Bath Spa lets you feel it for yourself. It is the only place in Britain where you can bathe in naturally warm spa water, drawn from the same springs the Romans used. The spa opened in 2006 in a building that pairs a restored Georgian bath house with a modern glass and stone cube, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the abbey.
The highlight is the open-air rooftop pool. You float in water at around body temperature while looking out across the rooftops to the abbey tower and the hills around the city, and on a cold evening, with steam rising into the dark, it is one of the most memorable experiences in England. Inside there is a larger pool on the ground floor and a floor of aroma steam rooms, and sessions are sold in blocks of a couple of hours, which is plenty for most people.
Across the street, the Cross Bath is a smaller, open-air Georgian bath fed directly by one of the springs, and it can be booked for a quieter, more intimate soak. Treatments such as massages can be added to either, and the spa café serves light meals so you can make an afternoon of it.
A few practical points. Book your session online in advance if you can, as weekend afternoons are busy and walk-up queues can be long, and a weekday or an early start is calmer. It is for adults and older teenagers only, so check the age rule before planning a family visit. Bring your own swimwear, while towels, robes and slippers come with the session.
3. The Royal Crescent and the Circus
Walk uphill from the centre and you reach the two great set pieces of Georgian Bath, designed by a father and son who between them created much of the city you see today. The Circus came first, begun by John Wood the Elder in the 1750s and finished by his son, John Wood the Younger: three curved terraces of townhouses arranged in a perfect circle around a green, with a group of huge plane trees at the centre. Look closely at the frieze running along the first floor and you will find hundreds of carved symbols, from serpents to ships, and along the parapet a row of stone acorns.
A short walk west along Brock Street brings you to the Royal Crescent, built by the younger Wood in the late 1760s and early 1770s. Thirty houses sweep round in a great half ellipse behind a single facade of more than a hundred columns, looking out over a sloping lawn and Royal Victoria Park. It is one of the most photographed streets in Britain, and it is still lived in, with most of the houses divided into flats and a couple run as a hotel.
Number 1 Royal Crescent is a museum that has been restored and furnished to show how a wealthy family lived here in the late eighteenth century, from the grand drawing room to the kitchen below stairs where the servants worked. It brings the street to life far better than admiring the front ever could, and it takes about an hour.
Afterwards, wander down into Royal Victoria Park, which has a botanical garden, a play area for children and space for a picnic, and in fine weather you may see hot air balloons rising from it in the early morning or evening. The Assembly Rooms, where Georgian society met for balls and card games, are a few minutes from the Circus, and the streets in between, such as Gay Street and Brock Street, are a pleasure simply to walk along.
4. Bath Abbey
Bath Abbey stands in the very centre of the city, beside the Roman Baths, and there has been a church on this site for well over a thousand years. King Edgar was crowned here in 973, in a ceremony that shaped English coronations ever since. The building you see now was begun in 1499, after Bishop Oliver King is said to have dreamed of angels climbing up and down a ladder to heaven.
That dream is carved in stone on the west front, where angels climb ladders on either side of the great door, and some of them are shown climbing downwards, which visitors love to spot. Inside, the abbey is famous for its fan vaulting, a delicate web of stone ribs spreading across the ceiling like the branches of a tree. The walls and floor are crowded with memorials to people who came to Bath for their health and did not leave, which gives a strange and moving picture of the Georgian city.
In recent years the abbey completed a major restoration of its floor, which had been collapsing because of the graves beneath it. As part of the work, a heating system was installed that uses energy from the hot spring water flowing through the old Roman drain nearby, a neat link between the city’s oldest and newest ideas.
For the best view in Bath, book a tower tour. You climb a spiral staircase of more than two hundred steps, stop to sit behind the face of the great clock and stand above the ringing chamber, and finally step out onto the roof, where the whole city, the crescents and the surrounding hills are laid out below. Tours run at set times and fill up, so book on the day or in advance, and wear sensible shoes.
5. Pulteney Bridge
Pulteney Bridge, completed in 1774 to a design by the architect Robert Adam, is one of only a few bridges in the world with shops built along its full length on both sides. From the street you would hardly know you were crossing a river at all, as you walk past little shops selling flowers, maps and coffee. To see it properly, you need to look at it from the river bank.
The classic view is from the riverside path near Parade Gardens or from North Parade Bridge, with Pulteney Bridge’s three arches reflected in the water and the curving, stepped Pulteney Weir churning below. It is one of the loveliest scenes in any English city, and it is at its best in the soft light of early morning or evening. The weir you see today was rebuilt in the twentieth century as part of the city’s flood defences, but it keeps the graceful curving steps that make the view so famous. The bridge itself has been repaired and altered more than once since Adam’s day, yet from the river it still looks much as he intended.
The bridge was built to link the old city with a new town planned on the far side of the river, and if you cross it you arrive in Great Pulteney Street, one of the widest and grandest Georgian streets in the country. At the far end stands the Holburne Museum, a handsome building with a collection of fine and decorative art and a garden café, set at the entrance to Sydney Gardens, a Georgian pleasure garden that Austen herself knew well.
Boat trips on the Avon leave from near the bridge in the warmer months and take you out past the edge of the city into the countryside for an hour or so, which is a restful way to see Bath from a different angle. Parade Gardens, just beside the bridge, has deckchairs, flower beds and a riverside terrace, and makes a good place to rest your feet between sights.
6. The Jane Austen Centre
Jane Austen lived in Bath for five years at the start of the nineteenth century, and set two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, largely in the city. Her feelings about the place were famously mixed, and her characters are often sharply funny about its society, its crowds and its endless round of balls and visits, but her name is now bound up with Bath for good.
The Jane Austen Centre, in a Georgian house on Gay Street, tells the story of her time here and of the city she knew, with costumed guides, displays about Regency life and fashion, and a waxwork of the author. It is small and gentle rather than grand, and it suits Austen readers best, but even visitors who have only seen the films usually enjoy it. Upstairs, the Regency Tea Room serves afternoon tea in period style.
Several of the houses Austen lived in are marked with plaques, including one at 4 Sydney Place, opposite Sydney Gardens, and walking between them is a good way to see parts of the city away from the busiest streets. The Pump Room, the Assembly Rooms and the Royal Crescent all appear in her books, so a walk with a copy of Persuasion in your pocket turns into a kind of literary treasure hunt.
Every September the city holds the Jane Austen Festival, which opens with a promenade of hundreds of people in Regency costume walking through the streets. If you are in Bath then, it is a wonderful and slightly surreal sight, and there are talks, dances and walks through the following days. Accommodation fills early for festival week, so book ahead if you want to be part of it.
Where to eat and drink
The most Bath of all meals is tea in the Pump Room, the elegant Georgian hall above the Roman Baths where fashionable visitors once came to drink the waters and be seen. You can still try a glass of the warm, mineral tasting spa water from the fountain, often to the sound of a pianist or a small trio, before settling down to afternoon tea.
Sally Lunn’s, in one of the oldest houses in Bath, serves the large, light Sally Lunn bun, a local speciality eaten with sweet or savoury toppings, and has a small museum in its cellar. Do not confuse it with the Bath bun, a smaller, sugar topped sweet bun sold in bakeries around the city. For more modern food, the independent cafés and restaurants around Walcot Street, known locally as the artisan quarter, and the streets near Kingsmead Square are the places to look, and Bath has a good choice of pubs serving local ales, many in handsome old buildings.
In late November and December, the Bath Christmas Market fills the streets around the abbey with wooden chalets selling crafts, food and mulled wine, and it is one of the best known Christmas markets in the country. It is also very busy, especially on Saturdays, so weekdays are more comfortable.
If you have a second day
Bath rewards a slower pace. The Bath Skyline, a waymarked walk of about six miles looked after by the National Trust, loops through woods and meadows on the hills above the city, with views down over the rooftops. Prior Park Landscape Garden, on the southern edge of the city, has a Palladian bridge, lakes and a view back towards the centre that has barely changed in two hundred years.
The Kennet and Avon Canal leaves the city through a flight of locks and runs east through lovely countryside, and you can walk or cycle the towpath to the village of Bathampton or further, to the aqueducts at Dundas and Avoncliff. Beyond the city, the Cotswolds, Wells and its cathedral, and the village of Lacock, much used by film makers, are all within an easy drive.
Getting there and getting around
Bath Spa station is right in the centre, a few minutes’ walk from the abbey, with direct trains from London Paddington taking roughly an hour and a half. Bristol, with its own main stations, is a short train ride away. The nearest airport is Bristol Airport, about 20 miles away by road, and many visitors from abroad also arrive through Heathrow, which is around two hours’ drive east along the M4.
The M4 passes a few miles north of the city, but the last stretch into Bath is on smaller roads that can be slow at busy times, and parking in the centre is limited and expensive. The city runs park and ride sites on the edges of town, and the centre itself is compact and best explored on foot, though it is hilly: the walk up to the Royal Crescent is steady rather than steep, while the Skyline and Prior Park involve real climbs.
A car booked ahead is the easiest way to arrive with luggage, especially from Bristol Airport or Heathrow, and to reach places outside the city such as Lacock, Castle Combe or the Cotswold villages, which are awkward to reach by public transport.
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