Bath city guide

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The Circus

Text guide

Bath, United Kingdom ✳

Roman history & sacred water

Roman Baths

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See why a Roman bathing complex shared its spring with a temple and a collection of angry personal prayers.♫

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Full story · About 2 min read✳

Bath tour guides

Explore Bath with five free written guides, real photos and map pins. Discover the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey and the Georgian streets.

Roman Baths guide · See why a Roman bathing complex shared its spring with a temple and a collection of angry personal prayers.

Bath Abbey guide · Read the west-front ladders and distinguish the Tudor stone ceiling from its Victorian continuation.

Royal Crescent guide · See how thirty separate houses could borrow the appearance of one enormous country-house frontage.

Pulteney Bridge guide · Understand why a landowner paid for a shopping street across the Avon, and why the two sides now look different.

The Circus guide · Read the inward-facing circle, stacked classical columns and carved details of the Woods’ Georgian housing experiment.

More places nearby

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Bath AbbeyBath

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Royal CrescentBath

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Sources and photo credits

Photo: Roman Baths in Bath Spa, England - July 2006.jpg by DAVID ILIFF · CC BY-SA 3.0. Resized and compressed; cropped for display.

Bath city guide

Explore Bath

Bath makes most sense when you keep two kinds of water in mind. Naturally hot spring water explains the Roman sanctuary and bathing complex. The River Avon explains the position of Pulteney Bridge, a crossing built to help a new district grow. Between them, the city developed a fashionable Georgian life whose streets still shape a visit.

These five guides connect the ancient spring, a church rebuilt over centuries and three ambitious pieces of eighteenth-century town planning. Read an opening Quick take or continue into the Full story. The collection is free, written in English and has no audio.

Choose a short story or read more detail with 5 free guides to the city’s landmarks and neighbourhoods.

Begin with the spring and the Abbey

The Roman Baths and Bath Abbey stand beside each other, but belong to different stories. One follows water, worship and personal appeals to a goddess. The other shows how medieval building and Victorian restoration can look like one continuous design.

The Great Bath with green spring water, the later surrounding terrace and Bath Abbey beyond

Roman Baths

See why a Roman bathing complex shared its spring with a temple and a collection of angry personal prayers.