THE THERMAL springs in Vyhne in central Slovakia were discovered as a mine shaft was being dug. The first two pools and spa buildings were constructed by the miners themselves, with one pool for ordinary people and the other reserved for nobility, as was customary at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.
It was mostly the Rosl family that cared for the spa at its start. Erasmus Rosl, a count and mayor of nearby Banská Štiavnica, put the most energy into the spa, which reached the climax of its popularity in the 18th century when there were as many as 600 daily visitors. A century later the spa attracted only 230 visitors a day.
The main spa building in Vyhne had two floors and 48 guest rooms. This postcard, dating to the period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, shows one of the smaller spa buildings.
The spa in Vyhne closed in the 20th century due to a dramatic fall in visitors after the end of World War I: like other spas it could no longer depend on well-off guests from Vienna or Budapest but had to rely only on poorer local visitors.
