Rogaska Slatina

Rogaška Slatina has been drawing people to drink its water since the seventeenth century, and the water is the reason: Donat Mg carries one of the highest magnesium concentrations of any bottled mineral water and has always been taken medicinally rather than for pleasure. The spa was laid out in the nineteenth century around a long open park lined with pillared hotels and a drinking hall where the water is still dispensed by the glass. A nearby glassworks was already making bottles for the water in the seventeenth century, and the town is still known for its cut crystal.

History

A document of the Archbishopric of Salzburg of 1141 mentions a Roman stone beside a spring here, and the 16th-century alchemist Leonhard Thurneysser was the first to describe the spring. The lord Peter de Curti built an inn at the site in 1676, when the water was bottled in glass from a nearby glassworks, and the neoclassical Tempel Pavilion designed by Nikola Pertsch was built in 1819 (Wikipedia, Rogaška Slatina).

What you'll find

• The drinking hall - the pavilion where Donat and the other waters are taken by the glass.
• The spa park - a long neoclassical park lined with nineteenth-century hotels.
• The Rogaska crystal works - the town's cut crystal glass.
• The treatment tradition - a spa run for medical courses rather than leisure bathing.

When to go

Year round; the spa works in all seasons and winter is quiet and cheap. Summer brings more leisure visitors. The park is at its best in late spring.

Before you go

The water is strongly mineral and unpleasant to drink for most people; that is the point of it. The town is oriented to medical courses and can feel institutional. Some of the older hotels are dated.

Nearby

Olimje is south, and Podsreda is southwest.

Key facts