Euganean baths: the wellness of the Gods
Hotel: hôtel in French, was borrowed through Old French hostel from Medieval Latin hospitale which means “guest, cosy”.
Abano: toponym from the Latin Aponus, the Venetian god of thermal waters that inspired the town name. Its linguistic specification fons Aponi or aquae Aponiae leads to Indo-European origin that surrounds word root * ap-, linked to the noun "water".
Words have weight, value, story to tell, and our team at Hotel Orvieto in Abano Terme has clear understanding of this suggestion that Today receives from this prominent History: taking care of the guest, making him experience the benefits of our water. "Without damaging they restore the lost strength, and the disease settles in the suffering, where health regains" wrote the Roman poet and senator Claudiano about the Euganean baths.This quotation made more than 1,600 years ago survived until the time of TripAdvisor.
And the fortune of our region in Roman times glorified by the Latin author is certainly not the only testimony. From the second half of the first century BC the urban center of Aponus slowly began to break away from the strictly religious matrix derived from the Paleovenian era: with the appointment of the nearby Patavium a municipium in 49 BC. Local upper class started visiting the spa areas promoting the construction of an authentic wellness complex of well-being articulated in several communicating spaces. Over the years, along the pools and connecting corridors arose wide tree-lined avenues, gardens, statues, fountains, theaters and villas, all widely documented by archaeological finds found in modern times. The further spread of its popularity within the upper bourgeoisie Roman, established the so-called mos baianum or"bathing suit", a serene abandonment to total relaxation, sometimes veiled, given the particular context of placid pools and private green areas, creating lasciviousness and breaking common schemes...
... But I'm being carried away! The history of Abano, of its enchanted location and iconic SPA there is so much to say that it is often necessary to stop suddenly and get back on track.
The magical thermal water of Abano: the earth's gift
I'm Martina, a part of the great Carraro family who, a few decades ago, at the time of my parents and the parents of my cousins, wanted to build our hotel. This splendid place in the middle of a beautiful park was built on a clear and precious resource, that of genuine spa, a real gift to which I dedicate myself with professionalism and passion every day.
I am in charge of Spa and Wellness department, but the simple title of a role in the organization chart is not sufficient to fully express the activity I am doing for several years. As a hotel we follow a philosophy of particular management, aimed at uniting a modern and functional administration with a careful exploitation of the natural and human heritage that was always present in the history of this Aponese land. Behind the words describing our services there is a living substance, a lively passion, a story to tell.
And our story regarding the baths has its beginning thanks to my father, Adriano.
When nowadays we talk in the family about the times when it was just a beginning of Hotel Orvieto's story, Papa Adriano gave his fundamental contribution to this entrepreneurial project that had rooted in everyone's mind. I with my cousins and relatives usually still shiver, the penises as they say to us, goosebumps.
Once something extraordinary and extremely magical happened. As a modern diviner my father traveled everywhere the ground holding a willow wand in his hand, looking for the exact point to dig for thermal water. I know, I stop you immediately: it may seem crazy, but I assure you that this is how it went. I tell you that after a certain time, a few minutes probably, Papa Adriano felt something special in the wood he carried in his palm, a kind of ancestral indication. After a while, that sort of inner shock exploded and materialized in the physical dimension: the branch began to wriggle in the hands of guardian, he began to contort, under the stunned eyes of all those present, almost wanting to free himself from the grip that held him, he soon tilted, tended, bent almost to break.
"This is the place where we need to dig," my father said in general astonishment, pushing his voice over the dry noise of the wand's fibers that threatened to yield under pressure. "That's the right place."
An exhortation that the brother and others faced with such a prodigious event, followed with confident transport. The auger then took to dig, more and more, deeper and deeper, just when hope began to falter, when we began to think "Okay, pity, who knows what it was, this time the uncle was wrong", here is the most beautiful gift that could happen: at 900 meters in the subsoil the lively and rare vocation of a thermal spring even among those seen in Abano, with an ideal temperature of 86 degrees and the peculiar characteristic to be salient, means to rise by natural thrust without the need for the use of pumps. An exceptional discovery is to say the least!
Among the various qualities of my father there have always been those of making any kind of tool with the most common objects of common use at hand, and of solving situations of delicate manual skill in a few, quick moves. An ingenious character that led him to play the role of handyman (together with the inevitable nickname MacGyver that we have given him in the family) but from the moment of discovery he was seized with the strong passion for SPA treatments.
Over the years Papa Adriano passed professional training as spa treatment specialist, an activity that he has been enhancing for forty years now, with dedication and emotional participation to the needs of the client: for our family there is nothing more beautiful than to see a guest affected by ailment towards complete harmony, refreshed from stress and worries and feeling concretely, physically healthier. Whether it is a distortion, a dislocation or a dislocation to overcome, whether it is an arthritic condition to soothe or a motor fatigue to recover, to assist in the real improvement of a person day after day, or in some cases even after a session and then from a 'now to the other, it is something that is really difficult to express in words, a feeling that warms the heart and makes you understand what it means to make something good for other individual.
Cure with the thermal waters: the confirmation of science
Our thermal water can be described through the practices where it is used, bringing benefits that go well beyond simplу relaxation. The fact is strong and the first scientific confirmations were provided from the great physician and philosopher Pietro d'Abano that lived between the 13th and 14th centuries. A scholar of Galen, Avicenna and Averroes, a Greek and Arabic connoisseur and a teacher at the Universities of Paris and Padua that, among the first, devoted himself to the empirical analysis of the benefits of thermal water and mud to cure sickness.
About seven centuries later, the research of the Pietro d'Abano Thermal Study Center endorsed by various international institutes, confirm the highly positive value of these healing elements. Classified at medical level as hyper-thermal salsobromoiodici, these real elixirs of well-being have dissolved electrolytes such as sodium and chlorine and a very high concentration of nitrogen, perfect mix to relieve chronic inflammatory processes, to speed up recovery times from traumas or post-intervention and to counteract normal articulatory fatigue due to age advancement.
Particular attention is paid to mud applied with mastery on the skin with large bands or on the contrary on circumscribed epidermal regions depending on the case, it has been shown that its beneficial properties are based on presence of microorganisms, a flora-fauna association that is evident by letting the muddy matter rest in specially designed tanks or silos, for a period of maturation of about sixty days, so as to allow the development of a green-sapphire biofilm of cyanobacteria and diatoms. The active ingredients released by this biological humus enhanced by the heat of the substance, are an effective remedy (without any contraindication or side effect!) for troublesome diseases and conditions such as periarthritis, tendinitis, lomboarthrosis, osteoarthritis, arthritis of the limbs and osteoporosis.
Well then, this range of remedies would certainly make the ancient god Aponus proud!
We are talking about a spark of history and tradition that we of the Carraro family have been jealously preserved for decades, not to keep it hidden, but to protect it and share it unchanged and vital with guests who have succeeded over time and come back to visit us. From father to daughter, from generation to generation, we protect that beneficial embrace of water and land that makes Abano a capital of well-being for many centuries.