Montecatini Terme | The Bath Without People

A Hungarian walks into the grandest spa in Tuscany and finds the era that built it has quietly ended

I grew up around water that smells.

In Budapest, you do not think of this as a flaw. The thermal water comes up out of the ground carrying its minerals with it, iron and sulfur, and whatever else the limestone has been holding for ten thousand years, and it announces itself before you see it. I lived a few minutes from the Széchenyi Bath for years, the g…