Leopoldine Baths

Before the Tettuccio square, along what was once the “Stradone dei Bagni”, you will find the Terme Leopoldine on the left.
Built according to a design by Gaspare Maria Paoletti, they were opened in 1775 but the healing properties of the spring must have been known already in Roman times since votive statuettes, most likely ex voto thrown into the spring to thank the gods for the healing, were found during the excavation work on the crater.

In 1780, Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo recommended that the works be carried out “out of pure necessity and without the luxury of decorations” evidently considering the building completed.

It is precisely in honor of the enlightened ruler that the “Bagno Caldo factory” – the hottest thermal water in the area flows from the spring – will take the name of Terme Leopoldine once completed.

Originally, the establishment was made up of only the portion of the building that overlooks Viale Verdi. On the front, the entrance recalls the facade of a Greek temple: two pillars and two Doric columns support a pediment where, in bas-relief, a fountain gushing between two basins is depicted. Below, in the entablature, the dedication of the building to Asclepius, God of Medicine: Aesculapius et saluti (To Asclepius and health). At the back, a courtyard with a large travertine pool in the center, over 23 meters in diameter, which, raised from the ground, housed the source of the healing waters of the same name

In his 1901 guide, Guido Biagi describes the establishment before its renovation by Ugo Giovannozzi in the first half of the 20th century: “The graceful building has a beautiful Doric loggia in the center with a frontispiece supported by columns and pillars in travertine, from which you enter a spacious vestibule that leads to the bath rooms. On either side of it are two lower loggias, with round arches, built in brick and with travertine decorations. There are small rooms with tubs for bathing… The beautiful room overlooks a courtyard, where there is a large pool of clear water…..”

Thus, the temple-like entrance served as a vestibule to the central entertainment room and as an entrance to the two wings of the building intended for the women's baths to the north and the men's to the south. At the ends of the wings, an access lounge led to large octagonal baths intended for the poor.

From 1919 to 1926, Ugo Giovannozzi modified Paoletti's project. The engineer maintained the façade, which had by then become the symbol of "thermal treatments", but closed the arches, removed the "merlons", or vent chimneys for the heat of the baths intended for the use of the poor, and extended the two lateral bodies, designed as two floors, to the crater of the Fonte del Grocco.
The pronaos thus took on a new importance, the main room was embellished with a coffered ceiling and a splendid skylight made by the Florentine company De Matteis whose artistic director was Ezio Giovannozzi, brother of Ugo. The spaces behind were also modified to give an impressive image to the visitor with marble and stucco and, on the sides, two monumental staircases to access the upper floors.
In the internal courtyard, the ring was built around the large pool and the stairs to access it.

The Leopoldina water was used for baths, showers and irrigations but also to extract the so-called "mother water" used for inhalations.

It was Professor Sante Pisani of the University of Pisa who introduced the use of mud macerated in Leopoldina water in the 1930s and restored a therapy practiced since Roman times. In fact, in 1918, he accompanied Maria Curie to the Tettuccio Baths and assisted her in measuring the level of radioactivity of that water, of which the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize (1903) left formal certification.

On 20 October 1957, the Spa Administration had a plaque placed inside the building in his honour, "master and distinguished doctor", as a promoter of mud therapy using the waters of Montecatini.

Visitabile

The Terme Leopoldine are currently not open to visitors.