The Thermia Palace Hotel and Irma Spa has been restored to its original 1930s elegance and is back in business healing the stressed and weary. Lucy Mallows reports from Piešt’any, Slovakia’s most famous spa town
The warm, eggy aroma hangs a little strangely in the opulent surroundings of sparkling stainedglass windows and shimmering ceramics. The ambience at Piešt’any’s Thermia Palace Hotel and adjoining Irma Spa recalls a Victorian swimming bath dredged from a childhood memory metamorphosing into a five-star luxury spa hotel, which is appropriate considering its history. Founder L’udovít Winter would have been impressed with how the renovations have preserved the features and atmosphere from Slovakia’s most famous spa hotel, a superb example of late art nouveau with eclectic features.
Almost a century after its original opening, the Thermia and Irma once again is entertaining high-society Slovaks, visitors who appreciate balneotherapy – the curative powers of sulphuric thermal waters – and those who want a thoroughly relaxing spa sojourn. When word got out that the water had healing powers, in 1551 – gushing forth on a leafy island in the middle of Piešt’any’s Váh River – central Slovakia attracted scores of visitors eager to try the thermal springs and sulphurous mud.
In 1778, nobleman Johann Erdödy built the first wooden bath house and in 1889 local businessman Winter leased the Spa Piešt’any from a descendent, Count Ferenc Erdödy. In 1910, Winter commissioned Budapest architects Ármin Hegedüs and Henrich Böhm to design the art nouveau Thermia Palace Hotel and Irma Spa, which opened two years later as a spa destination for the wealthy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The construction of the hotel and spa turned Piešt’any from a modest village into a mecca for water-worshippers, spa sybarites and those seeking cures overnight. In its first year (1912), at least 17,000 guests visited.
Now, after a three-year, 400m koruny ($15.8m) renovation, the Thermia Palace and Irma Spa has reopened as Slovakia’s first five-star spa hotel complex. The Irma Spa’s mud pool is unique in Europe. The pool is 21m in diameter and 500sq m in area, situated beneath a 16m-high monumental cupola. The pool is built above thermal-water springs and its floor is covered with a thick layer of healing thermal mud, punctuated by hot mineral-water springs. The ceiling above the pool is made from two reinforced concrete cupolas, an innovative construction technique at the time.
In 2003, the four-month restoration of the mud pool began, starting with the cupola. ‘The pool was built directly above hot springs and mud deposits, on oak piers with a reinforced concrete column base continuing to the cupola in a ribbed form,’ says engineer Imrich Reichel. ‘The pool was in a deplorable state due to aggressive sulphur vapours and insufficient ventilation.’ The cupola and the concrete construction were corroded, the masonry was wet and the plasterwork was peeling off
Because Irma is a protected cultural building, returning it to its original state was tricky. The floor of the pool is covered with a 10-30cm layer of thermal mud and could not support scaffolding, so workers laid out a radius of steel beams, supported at the pier positions and erected the scaffolding on the beams. Three pumps were used to remove the 56.7°C water from the restoration area.
‘The workers had to be replaced every three hours as they were not able to bear the steam and heat,’ says chief restorer Stanislav Chorvát. ‘It was not possible to use mechanical methods, everything had to be done manually.’
‘It was a really demanding project especially because the site is listed as a protected cultural building,’ adds architect Štefan Pertáš, from the building contractor Raving Inc. ‘We had to deliver all the supplies through a 1sq m hole. We literally had to stitch the cupola [together] over the pool.’
In addition to the hot thermal water, the mud also provided problems for restorers. ‘Before we started, almost 10 per cent of the pool’s mud was wheeled out and part of the mud was washed out using water jets,’ says Pertáš. ‘After the renovation was complete, new mud was wheeled in – almost 400 wheelbarrow loads for the women’s section and 600 for the men’s.’
The mud pool was originally illuminated by two rows of windows filled with geometrically sectioned stained glass dividing the male and female sections. ‘The stained-glass windows of Irma have a specific 1912 art nouveau character,’ says local craftsman Jaroslav Kupco, who was in charge of restoring the windows to their former splendour. He used what is known as the Tiffany technique, in which the individual parts of the design are connected with copper tape.
‘The lead connecting the parts was soft, the stained-glass panes were almost falling apart, and it was time to rescue them,’ he says. ‘The section decorated with folk motives comes from an earlier restoration in the 1960s. I admire the amazing achievement of the old masters who didn’t have modern tools.’
To renovate the windowpanes and clock, restorers worked from old photographs from the Balneology Museum in Piešt’any’s town park. The ceramic decorations, the central fountain and the ribbing were created by a team of restorers from Banská Bystrica led by L’ubomír Rendek.
The spa’s founder, Winter, chose the peacock as the Thermia’s emblem because of a legend involving a bird that was healed by waters from Piešt’any springs, inspiring locals to dig holes and wallow in the healing mud. For the sumptuous refurbishment, Austrian interior designer Gina Zarski used a peacock feather in her designs for carpet patterns in the rooms and hallways, as well as the new logo. ‘I was deeply impressed by its wonderful architectural design and diverse style elements,’ she says. ‘It all leaves the impression of a nostalgic cocktail of forms. There is no comparing this hotel to any other project.’
The famous Alfons Mucha painting titled Be greeted, the blessed spring of health (Bud’ pozdravený požehnaný pramen zdravia), stolen from the Thermia Palace in October 2000 and found by police four years later, was returned to its original setting. Czech police found the painting in Brno, held by two men from Karlovy Vary. Mucha created the painting in 1932, specifically to fit the pentagon tympanum in the Thermia’s dining room. He donated the picture to the spa as a gift for curing his daughter. It was badly damaged when the thieves cut it out from the frame and rolled it up. Paint came off in many places and it took 10 months to restore in Ján Hromada’s studio.
The art nouveau architecture displayed so confidently at the Thermia Palace and Irma Spa influenced spa architecture all over Slovakia. Art nouveau spa hotels sprang up in the High Tatras, Starý Smokovec, Štrbské Pleso, Tatranská Polianka and in the spa town of Bardejov
Bulgarian tsar Ferdinand I was one of the first to sign the guest book and he proclaimed that a finer hotel could not be found in all Europe. He liked it so much he returned another 13 times. In 1917, Ferdinand chose the Thermia Palace as a venue to meet with two other monarchs, Wilhelm II of Germany and Karl I of Austria-Hungary, to discuss their war strategy.
The spa attracted many aristocratic visitors, including Ludwig van Beethoven, and became a fashionable destination for Indian maharajahs, nawabs and sultans who flocked to the modest Slovak town to take the waters. All kinds of other luminaries have visited the spa, from silent-film star Lillian Gish to three-time former prime minister Vladimír Meciar, who brought supermodel Claudia Schiffer. Slovak opera star Peter Dvorský and tennis-competition founder Sir Henry Davis have also tipped their toes in the healing waters
THREE MORE SLOVAK SPAS
AquaCity Poprad (www.aquacity.sk) is an eco-friendly favourite for families with young children. Sklené Teplice has an atmospheric cave pool and its waters are good for the nervous system and the over stressed. (www.kupeleskleneteplice.sk) Trencianske Teplice (www.slktn.sk) has a beautiful Turkish hammam (steam room) decorated with blue tiles.
LEGEND HAS IT
One local myth goes like this: around the time of the birth of Christ, Roman soldiers were digging defences close to the Váh River when hot water spurted out. A few volunteers removed their armour and went in for a dip, discovering the water had an almost immediate curative effect. Later, a wooden spa was built. Physician Juraj Wernher was the first to describe the effects of thermal water in a book published in the 16th century.
GETTING THERE
The MR Štefánik Airport Bratislava is the principal international airport of the Slovak Republic. (www.airportbratislava.sk)
Piešt’any is situated 80km northeast of Bratislava on the main Bratislava-Kosice rail line. Frequent train connections take 75 minutes from Bratislava’s main railway station.
Hire a car in Bratislava and take the Motorway D61 to Trnava, which passes close by Piešt’any. There are regular coaches from Vienna (www.eurolines.sk).
THERMIA PALACE HOTEL AND IRMA SPA Winterova 29 921 29 Piešt’any Slovakia Tel: (+421) 33 775 7733 www.spa-piestany.sk
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