What is Bad Sulza known for?

Bad Sulza is known as a state-recognised salt spa, certified in 2004, built on four and a half centuries of salt production going back to 1554 — with a wine festival and Thuringia's only wine gate on the side.

When did Bad Sulza become a spa?

The brine had been used for cures for years before the town began promoting it publicly in 1847, the year its own chronicle calls the birth of the salt bath. The town gained state recognition as a healing spa in 2002 and as a salt spa specifically in 2004.

What is the history of salt in Bad Sulza?

Several trades combined to found the first saline in 1554, and a second followed in Unterneusulza in 1623 — brine drawn up, boiled down and sold as table salt for the next three centuries.

What else is Bad Sulza known for besides the spa?

Wine: the town sits at the eastern edge of the Saale-Unstrut wine country, where the Ilm runs into the Saale. It held its first wine festival in 1993 and built Thuringia's only wine gate in 1994.

Bad Sulza

East

About Bad Sulza

Salt made this town and brine keeps it. Sulza boiled salt from the sixteenth century, discovered in the nineteenth that people would pay to bathe in the same brine, and has been a state-recognised salt spa since 2004 — with a wine festival and Thuringia's only wine gate on the side.

Sights in Bad Sulza

Toskana Therme Bad SulzaSpa
Bad Sulza, Weimarer Land
The spa is the present-day form of the town's brine trade, which its chronicle traces from the first saline works of 1554.

Bad Sulza in depth

The salt works came first, 1554 and 1623

In 1554 several trades combined to found a mining operation and a salt works — the first saline in Sulza. A second followed in Unterneusulza in 1623. That is the town's economy for the next three centuries: brine drawn up, boiled down, and sold as table salt, in a valley that had nothing else of the kind.

1847: the year the bath was born

The brine had been used for cures for several years before anybody advertised it. In 1847 the town began to promote the practice publicly, and the town's own chronicle calls that the birth year of the salt bath; the municipal bath house opened in 1851. It is a small, honest way to describe how a spa actually starts — not with a decree but with a trade noticing what it already had.

Recognised, twice, in the 2000s

The modern status arrived late and in two steps. From 25 February 2002 the town could call itself a state-recognised healing spa, and on 5 February 2004 it was certified as a state-recognised salt spa — the designation it carries today, and the reason the therme in the valley draws people from beyond Thuringia. The apparatus of a spa town stands with it: the town names a graduation tower, the Gradierwerk "Louise", and a spa park with a pump room and a historic inhalatorium.

And the wine, from 1993

This is also the eastern edge of a wine country: the Ilm runs into the Saale here, and the Saale-Unstrut vineyards begin. The first wine festival in Bad Sulza was held in 1993, and Thuringia's only wine gate was built and dedicated here in 1994. A replica of Goethe's garden house was dedicated on 27 August 2002, the day before the poet's birthday.

Questions visitors ask

What is Bad Sulza known for?: Bad Sulza is known as a state-recognised salt spa, certified in 2004, built on four and a half centuries of salt production going back to 1554 — with a wine festival and Thuringia's only wine gate on the side.
When did Bad Sulza become a spa?: The brine had been used for cures for years before the town began promoting it publicly in 1847, the year its own chronicle calls the birth of the salt bath. The town gained state recognition as a healing spa in 2002 and as a salt spa specifically in 2004.
What is the history of salt in Bad Sulza?: Several trades combined to found the first saline in 1554, and a second followed in Unterneusulza in 1623 — brine drawn up, boiled down and sold as table salt for the next three centuries.
What else is Bad Sulza known for besides the spa?: Wine: the town sits at the eastern edge of the Saale-Unstrut wine country, where the Ilm runs into the Saale. It held its first wine festival in 1993 and built Thuringia's only wine gate in 1994.