The Most Beautiful Spa Towns in the World
2 places in 2 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful spa towns in the world are Bad Gastein (Austria) and West Baden Springs Hotel (United States). The list covers 2 spa towns in 2 countries. Austria has the most, with 1. Last updated 13 October 2026.
01 Bad Gastein
Austria47.115° N 13.136° E
Image by Separatus from Pixabay Bad Gastein is a spa town that looks like a small city clinging to a cliff. It sits at about 1,000 m in the Gastein Valley of the Hohe Tauern, and its centre was built around a waterfall: the Gasteiner Ache drops about 340 m in three steps straight through the middle of town, spanned by a stone bridge of 1840. Because the slopes are so steep, the hoteliers of the 19th century stacked their grand houses many storeys high along the rock, which earned the place the nickname of the "skyscraper village".
Did you know? The radon healing gallery at Böckstein was found in the 1940s, when miners boring under the Radhausberg in search of gold met hot, radon-rich air.
02 West Baden Springs Hotel
United States38.567° N 86.618° W
Nyttend · Public domain Under a dome 200 feet (61 m) across, the atrium of the six-storey West Baden Springs Hotel opens like a circus tent turned to steel and glass. When the hotel opened in 1902, this was the largest dome in the world, and it held that title until 1913; in the United States no free-spanning dome surpassed it until 1955. Rooms ring the atrium in two concentric circles, the inner ones looking down onto a floor of some two million small marble squares.
Did you know? Major league teams including the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates held spring training on a lighted baseball diamond set inside the resort's cycling track.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful spa towns in the world?
- On our list, Bad Gastein (Austria) ranks first, followed by West Baden Springs Hotel (United States).
- Which country has the most spa towns in the world?
- In our collection, the most come from Austria (1) and the United States (1).
- How many spa towns are on this list in the world?
- The list covers 2 spa towns in 2 countries. Austria has the most, with 1.