Original Scientific Article
Visitors to Greek Thermal and Seaside Spas
(Mid-19th Century–Early 20th Century)
Melina Kostidi
University of Thessaly, Greece
melinakostidi@hotmail.com
Thermal tourism is considered the first form of tourism in the 19th-century Greek
state. At that time, patients decided to travel to Greek thermal baths to seek therapy
and pain relief. The first thermal spas in Greece can be considered ‘latecomers,’ be-
cause they began to develop after their counterparts in other areas of Europe, and
they had few and limited facilities.However, in themid-19th century, the urban space
of Greek thermal spas and seaside resorts began to transform architecturally due to
measures taken according to state policy and the increasing number of visitors. In
this paper, I will attempt to study the architectural transformation of Greek spas
and the profile of visitors and patients in the two phases of their development. My
research is based on 19th-century primary sources (laws and doctrines, patient reg-
istries, medical reports, advertisements, postcards, novels andmemoirs). I will assert
that in the first stage of their development (1833–1890) Greek resorts had minimal
accommodation and leisure facilities. Their clientele consisted of patients and trav-
ellers from nearby locations who encountered the lack of proper medical care and
accommodation establishments. In their next phase (1890–1930), the urban space of
Greek spas was transformed to cater to the needs of a different clientele. Visitors to
Greek spas were patients and holidaymakers who usually travelled with other family
members. The square and the promenade of thermal spas and seaside resorts be-
came centres of urban sociability. They stayed at luxury hotels, and they enjoyed the
sociability of modern facilities (restaurants, theatres, and casinos).
Keywords: spas, seaside resorts, leisure, tourism, Greece
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.12.5-12
Introduction
In the 21st century, travellers can plan a trip to any des-
tination they wish easily and quickly thanks to tech-
nological and transport innovations. When they ar-
rive at the tourism destination of their choice, several
accommodation and leisure amenities can cater to all
their needs. It could be claimed that modern travellers
face few or no difficulties in comparison to the trans-
port and accommodation problems that 19th-century
travellers had to overcome. However, these problems
did not seem to deter the first patients who travelled
to Greek spas to seek thermal therapy. Although they
were aware of the transport difficulties and the lack
of proper amenities, these patients and visitors sought
the ‘world of Greek baths.’
This paper presents the profile of these patients and
visitors in the two periods of development of Greek
spas. In the first period (1833–1890), patients trav-
elled mainly alone, while in the next period (1890–
1930) they took their families with them for vacations
and they seemed to show a higher preference for sea-
side resorts that had entertainment facilities. Primary
sources (patient registries, medical treatises, adver-
tisements, travel guides, literary and autobiographical
Academica Turistica, Year 12, No. 1, June 2019 | 5
Melina Kostidi Visitors to Greek Thermal and Seaside Spas
texts were used to highlight the gender, interests, and
diseases of patients and visitors (men and women of
different classes) toGreek spas. The poor patients were
also a particular but ‘neglected’ category of the pub-
lic of Greek baths, as they also travelled to them and
received proper care.
The First Patients and Visitors to Greek Spas
(1833–1890)
The period 1833–1890 is considered a crucial point
in the development of Greek spas, as in this period,
their urban space began to transform, and their first
clientele was formed (Dritsas, 2002). The spas that
welcomed the first patients were Kythnos, followed
by Edipsos, Hypati, Loutraki, Methana, Kyllini, and
Faliro (Varella, 2001a; 2001b). These first resorts had
two main advantages that favoured their gradual de-
velopment: they were conveniently located, and pa-
tients could travel to them quite easily from Athens
and from the nearby cities and islands. All of them
(Hypati excluded) were seaside towns, and thus, they
were accessible by sea. Apart from the fact that the sea
facilitated relatively easy transportation, the seafront
gradually became an integral part of the urban space
of Greek spas. Taking sea baths, which were initially
recommended to patients by their doctors, quickly
became a fashionable trend. In contrast, the various
accommodation and leisure facilities (hotels, restau-
rants, coffee shops) that were constructed on their
seafront in this period facilitated the sociability among
patients and their escorts.
The first patients who visited the Greek baths for
cure were those of the Cycladic island of Kythnos.
They travelled to this spa town in the 1830s seeking
thermal therapy upon the recommendations of doc-
tors and writers of medical treatises who praised the
healing properties of the thermal waters (Landerer,
1850). Their number showed a remarkable increase,
especially after the visits of the royal couple Otto and
Amalia. Queen Amalia made use of the baths of Kyth-
nos, because she was hoping to overcome her gynae-
cological problems and be able to conceive an heir.
The first records of patients on Kythnos began imme-
diately after the establishment of the bathing facilities
(Kardamitsi-Adami, 2001). The caretakers and baths
doctors recorded with great care the gender, occupa-
tions, and diseases of patients as well as the effects that
the hot water had on their health. Thus, these patient
registries are critical archival sources that provide in-
formation on the profile of the first Kythnos patients.
In 1844, during the bathing season (June to Oc-
tober), 50 patients received care in the bathhouse of
Kythnos. The patient registry of the year 1847 is ex-
tremely meticulous, since the name, occupation, and
diseases of the 58 patients and the effects of the hot
baths were recorded. The patients of 1849 totalled 101.
The patient registry 1851, also written with great care
and detail, shows 172 patients (men and women) who
lived in various regions of Greece (Ministry of Interior
1845, 1848, 1851, 1861).
Eight years later Katakouzinos, the doctor of Kyth-
nos baths wrote a medical report on the patients trav-
elling to Kythnos. The 272 patients lived in Athens,
or they were locals. Others came from the nearby Cy-
cladic islands or large Greek city centres. More specif-
ically, 56 patients lived in Athens, 47 lived on Syros, 40
were locals from Kythnos, 17 lived in Nafplio, and 11
in Patras, while three patients came from Smyrna and
one from Istanbul (Ministry of Interior Archive, 1861).
Another essential primary source for the number
and the diseases of Kythnos patients is the 1835 trea-
tise on the baths of Kythnos, written by a Bavarian
chemist Xavier Landerer. His treatise was based on the
fieldwork and scientific observations of bath doctors
Konstantinos Drosinis and Gregorius Despotopoulos.
According to the chemist, the Kythnos bathhouse had
200–250 patients annually. During the 14 months of
its operation, 500 patients received treatment. Only
84 could afford to stay in the baths of Kythnos for
an extended period and receive medical care. Most of
them suffered from rheumatism, arthritis, or venereal
diseases, and they noticed that the mineral waters of
Kythnos offered them some relief. The 80 female pa-
tients suffered from gynaecological problems. In the
next decades, the number of patients showed a gradual
increase due to the expansion of the royal bathhouse
and the appointment of a spa doctor. According to
the medical observations of the spa doctor Gregorius
Despotopoulos, in 1847–1849, the number of Kythnos
patients stood around 300–400 per year, and those
6 | Academica Turistica, Year 12, No. 1, June 2019
Melina Kostidi Visitors to Greek Thermal and Seaside Spas
who had received hot water treatment for three con-
secutive years fully recovered (Kandylis, 1981).
For the patients, the trip to Kythnos was a real ad-
venture, since in the first years no steamboat would fa-
cilitate the access to the island. Upon arrival, patients
had to cope with inadequate accommodation facili-
ties. It is worth noting that even in the first years of
Kythnos, social segregation existed: The poor patients
found accommodation in two other buildings and at a
small church, and they were separated from those who
stayed at the bathhouse. The price of a bath was half
drachma and of a room was one and a half drachma.
The Kythnos spa doctor, Gregorius Despotopoulos re-
quested that there should be a room price adjustment
according to the number of patients in each bathing
season (Ministry of Interior, 1864). The bathing and
accommodation facilities were improved when the
doctor Aggelis Hantzaras rented the baths for twenty
years in 1871 (Efimeris tis Kyverniseos, 23–24 March
1871).
The poorer patients of Kythnos baths are a ‘ne-
glected’ and perhaps unknown category of their pub-
lic. According to their request letters, these patients
were eligible to free travel and free use of baths. They
usually requested to be sent to the spa for therapy dur-
ing the summer months, from April to July (when the
thermal baths were open, and the number of patients
was high). In their request letters, they stated that ther-
mal therapy was a necessity to them, as they suffered
from chronic pains, and they were unable to work
and look after themselves. The surviving documents
provide evidence about their gender, their residence,
their health problem, and in some cases their occupa-
tion. According to their poverty certificates, they were
mainly internal migrants: they lived in the Munici-
pality of Athens (and one lived in the Municipality of
Piraeus), but they were born in other different regions
of Greece. The lack of reference to their occupation
could imply that their disease prevented them from
working. Their most common diseases were arthritis
and rheumatism, and there was one case of a woman
who suffered from a gynaecological problem (Min-
istry of Interior 1845, 1848, 1851, 1861, 1864).
The patients of Kythnos baths could be considered
an interesting case study for a researcher of the his-
tory of medicine because they were the first public
who trusted and used the thermal baths for healing.
In the following decades, the growing interest on be-
half of the public resulted in a gradual development
of other spa resorts. These Greek spas were: Hypati,
Edipsos, Methana and Loutraki. Although in their be-
ginnings they had minimal accommodation facilities,
and their patients faced the similar problems as those
in Kythnos, the number of their visitors continued to
grow and today these destinations are considered to
be the oldest Greek hot springs spa towns. Another
two early destinations were two seaside resorts, Kyllini
and Faliro, where visitors could enjoy a combination
of thermal and sea baths.
Nineteenth-century advertisements and announce-
ments in the press (in magazines and newspapers) are
essential primary sources for the development of these
Greek resorts as well as the interests and habits of their
visitors. The advertisements emphasised the low cost
and suitable services that Greek spas were able to offer
to their visitors. In press announcements, the renters
of Greek baths and the managers of grand hotels com-
peted with each other, as they all promised comfort
and proper treatment. Advertisements also stated that
hotel rooms and meals in the restaurants of Greek
spas had the same price as those in Athens (Empros,
18 March 1899; Efymeris, 28 June 1890).
The advertisements frequently used phrases such
as: ‘rooms available for all classes and budgets’ and
‘the aristocracy and the people,’ which promoted the
inclusivity of Greek baths (Efymeris, 21 April 1884; 3
May 1884). Thus, it could be claimed that the accom-
modation, treatment, and entertainment in the urban
space of Greek thermal and seaside resorts was not
an exclusive privilege of the upper class. However, it
can be concluded that the majority of visitors were
middle-class people whose salary would have offered
them the chance to travel to Greek spas for a few days
with the family and combine their need for treatment
with leisure.
The Patients-Tourists in the Second Period
of Development of Greek Spas (1890–1930)
The second period of development of Greek resorts
could be considered their ‘heyday.’ In the period of
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Melina Kostidi Visitors to Greek Thermal and Seaside Spas
1890–1930 Greek spas became popular tourist desti-
nations due to legislation that favoured the operation
of luxurious grand hotels and entertainment facilities.
Elefterios Venizelos’ government, in light of the geo-
graphical expansion of the Greek state following the
BalkanWars, passed a great number of laws about the
exploitation of thermal springs that encouraged the
development of spas. In 1915, the Ministry of National
Economy set up a committee to ‘study the measures to
be taken for the scientific anddeliberate exploitation of
the thermal springs.’ During 1915 and 1916, a chemist,
Anastasios Damvergis, also a member of the commit-
tee, wrote a series of memoranda requesting the adop-
tion of a special law that would regulate the exploita-
tion of thermal waters. Eventually, these requests were
accepted, and the laws 1292 (Efimeris tis Kyverniseos,
13–16 April 1918) and 2188 (Efimeris tis Kyverniseos,
17 June 1920) defined that the thermal springs were
owned by the State and their exploitation was trans-
ferred to the Ministry of National Economy. The ther-
mal springs that were not being exploited on January
1, 1920, were owned by the State regardless of the own-
ership of the land in which they were (Law 2188, article
2). This law gave to the state the right to supervise the
operation of private thermal springs and to expropri-
ate them when appropriate (Law 2188, Article 3).
In 1922, Law 2992 facilitated the concession agree-
ments (for a period of up to 25 years) between the
state and individuals or companies in exchange for the
construction of accommodation and entertainment
facilities. The renters of the thermal baths of Kaiafa,
Smokovo, Platistomou, Sidirokastro, Lagkada, Neo
Loutraki, and Kyllini had an obligation to construct
facilities of European standards within the 25-year pe-
riod of the contract. According to the law, the terms
of exploitation of the thermal springs were specified in
the contract that was signed by the contractors and the
government. The decisions for the development of the
Greek baths were taken by the Ministry of Economy.
The contractorswere obliged to act in accordancewith
the ministry’s instructions, and the erected buildings
(hydrotherapy facilities, hotels, and clubs) would have
to comply with the hygiene regulations. In the 1930s,
most mineral springs had been declared public, but
there were still some which were owned by individu-
als, municipalities, and monasteries. However, in the
late 1930s, there were some variations in the number
of public and private thermal springs. Of the total of
160 registered thermal springs, only 44 were in use,
and 32 of them belonged to the state, while only 12 be-
longed to individuals, municipalities, andmonasteries
(Lekkas, 1930).
During this ‘heyday’ period, visitors showed a par-
ticular preference for sea baths, they walked along the
seafront, and they socialised in the square and at the
leisure facilities (hotels, casinos, and restaurants) of
Greek spas. Another important factor that increased
the popularity of Greek thermal and seaside resorts
was the improvement of transport. The difficult ac-
cess to the baths in the previous period was a deterrent
factor for Greeks and for incoming visitors. However,
in the 1890–1930 period, visitors could travel quickly
and comfortably to spas from Athens and other major
cities by coach, by train, or by ship.
In the late 19th century, the seaside spas Edipsos
and Loutraki began gaining popularity, because they
offered sea and thermal baths and accommodation fa-
cilities that were affordable to visitors of all classes and
incomes. The grand hotels Thermae Sylla, Avra, Pi-
gai, Heraklion and Istiea in Edipsos and Palmyra, as
well as Akti and Avra in Loutraki, offered comfortable
and luxurious accommodation to upper-class visitors,
but there were rooms available for visitors and lower-
income families. The establishment of entertainment
facilities also made these cosmopolitan spas an ideal
destination for visitors and their families who were
seeking sociability, relaxation, and rest. The members
of a family who travelled to Edipsos enjoyed the sun
and sea on the beaches of the spa town; they went
on excursions to nearby areas, and they took walks
in the countryside. They spent most of their day and
night socialising in the casino which was built ac-
cording to the architectural design of the casino of
Berlin. The casino had separate rooms for meals, fam-
ily gatherings, and dances. There was also a chat and
billiard room and rooms that were suitably furnished
for poker and bridge players. Apart from the relax-
ation and gambling that the casino offered, the public
had the opportunity to watch performances and films
in the cinema-theatre. There were drama and comedy
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Melina Kostidi Visitors to Greek Thermal and Seaside Spas
performances performed daily, and various famous
Greek playwrights of this period presented their plays
to the public of Edipsos for the first time.
‘Greece’s Monte Carlo,’ Loutraki, developed due
to railway transport that was established in the last
decades of the 19th century and the aftermath of the
earthquakes of 1924 and 1928. The aosk (Autono-
mous Organisation of Earthquake – Victims of Corin-
th) chaired by the bishop of Corinth Damascus was
established in 1930 to help the earthquake victims. In
this period, the spa town was rebuilt, and a casino and
hotels were constructed. Its urban space was signifi-
cantly improved with the design of parks and squares.
Thus, during the interwar period, Loutraki became a
cosmopolitan destination, and famous personalities
from Greece and abroad visited the seaside spa town
throughout the year. The casino of Loutraki was the
main attraction during the winter and summer season
until its closure in 1936 (Koukoulas, 2001).
In this period the remarkable work of the Service
of Foreigners and Exhibitions provides insight on the
profile of Greek spas visitors. This service of the Min-
istry of National Economy had a special department
responsible for the research and operation of thermal
springs. The service played an essential role in the
development of Greek spas, as it carefully recorded
the number of their visitors. In 1920, the first statisti-
cal analysis was conducted, and the service recorded
the number of bathers in order to detect any deficien-
cies and to proceed to the necessary construction im-
provements of baths. Since then, the service published
an annual statistic of the people who frequented the
spas (patients, their escorts and tourists), the number
of baths they were taken and the revenues that were
generated (Efimeris tis Kyverniseos, 30 August 1911, 19
February 1919).
Nicholaos Lekkas, the head of the service, attribu-
ted the increase in the number of spa visitors to two
main factors: The visitors (who could be called holi-
daymakers) in this period came from various parts of
Greece and from abroad (mainly from Egypt). They
were attracted by the improved leisure and accommo-
dation facilities that Greek spas offered to them. An-
other factor was the economic crisis of the years 1936–
1938 that limited the currency capacity of upper-class
Table 1 A catalogue of Patients Who Used the Public
Mineral Springs of Greece in the Years 1935–1937
Public thermal springs Number of persons
  
Edipsos   
Eleftheres   
Thermopylae   
Kamena Vourla   
Caiaphas   
Kythnos   
Kyllini   
Lagadas   
Loutraki   
Methana   
N. Apollonia   
N. Loutraki (Pozar)   
Smokovo   
Hypati   
Notes Adapted rom Lekkas (1938, p. 245).
visitors who used to prefer the European spas in the
previous period. The number of patients who used the
private thermal springs of Greece for the years 1935,
1936 and 1937 were 24,667, 25,917, and 22,069, respec-
tively. The public thermal springs had 36,495, 35,219
and 42,878 patients for the years 1935, 1936, and 1937,
respectively (Table 1) (Lekkas, 1938).
According to the statistics of the year 1933, the
spas that gathered the larger number of tourists from
abroad were Loutraki and secondarily Edipsos. The
continuous stream of people (local and foreigners)
who visited the spas (mainly Edipsos and Loutraki)
indicates that most of them were not patients but
tourists who visited the Greek spas with their fam-
ilies for holidays. Apart from these two cosmopoli-
tan resorts, Methana, Hypati, Smokovo, Lagadas, and
Caiaphas had the appropriate infrastructure to host
foreign tourists. The figures indicate a gradual in-
crease in the number of visitors due to a large extent to
concession agreements between the state and compa-
nies or entrepreneurs that improved that urban space
of Greek thermal and seaside resorts, thereby mak-
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Melina Kostidi Visitors to Greek Thermal and Seaside Spas
ing them more appealing to visitors. A characteris-
tic example is the Caiaphas baths, which managed to
triple the number of their visitors during the conces-
sion period, which lasted for twenty years (1907–1927)
(Lekkas, 1923).
The ‘Voices’ of the Public: Visitors to Greek Spas
in Literary and Autobiographical Texts
The ‘voices’ of Greek spas visitors and patients were
documented in thank you letters, memoirs, and auto-
biographical novels. These texts are essential sources
of oral history as they reveal the preferences and expe-
riences of the public of Greek resorts. In their thank-
you letters, patients mentioned their name, their place
of origin, the time they stayed in the baths and the ef-
fect that the thermal springs had on their health. These
letters were also as a means of persuasion to ‘advertise’
the healing properties of the baths (Damvergis, 1905).
The Greek spa towns in the last decades of the 19th
century and the early 20th century served as a source
for inspiration for novelists who chose to depict the
urban spaces of Greek spas and the profile of their
visitors in literary texts. These texts (novels, short sto-
ries andmemoirs)were often based on the experiences
and the impressions that their writers had during their
stay at the thermal and seaside Greek resorts. The
main themes of these life-writing texts are the hope
of patients for a cure, social discriminations, and the
need of the public for entertainment and sociability in
the leisure facilities of resorts.
The great novelist Penelope Delta met and later
married by match-making her husband, Stefanos Del-
tas in Faliro, the popular seaside resort near Athens.
She travelled with her family from Alexandria to Ath-
ens to meet Stephanos Deltas and consent (with few
objections) to the marriage arranged by her family.
Before their first meeting, her mother advised her to
wear appropriate clothing for the occasion, which in-
dicates the importance of public display in the public
sphere of the Athenian resort (Delta, 1994). During
her stay in Athens, Penelope Delta had the opportu-
nity to dine several times in Faliro and experience
herself the sociability that the bourgeois Athenians
enjoyed in the resort. She met many members of the
Athenian bourgeoisie in the restaurants located on the
seafront of Faliro. The pier offered Penelope Delta and
her company the pleasure of walking along the sea-
side. In such a walk on the pier, the novelist discussed
the matter of her marriage with her uncle, and she was
persuaded to give her consent. The eve of their en-
gagement ended with a family dinner in a restaurant
on the Faliro seafront in which she received the wishes
of her relatives.
In another walk on the pier with her future hus-
band, she had the opportunity to make a personal
‘confessional’ conversation with him in an attempt to
become better acquainted with him. While they were
conversing, she avoided looking at him, and she fo-
cused her attention on the stormy sea, which reflected
the lights of the seafront. During their conversation
on the pier, the pair was keeping some distance from
the crowd of walkers. At the end of the night, they
returned to Athens together by train (Delta, 1994).
In contrast to Penelope Delta who experienced the
sociability of the popular resort from the ‘privileged’
position of the visitor, another renownedGreekwriter,
Menelaos Lountemis, spent a summer working in an-
other famous spa town. In his autobiographical novel
Kalinyxta Zoe (Goodnight Zoe) Menelaos Lountemis
describes his experiences as a waiter in Edipsos. The
case of the author, who found seasonal employment
in the resort, is perhaps indicative of the development
of the spa and its architectural transformation from a
small village to a popular tourist resort. M. Lountemis
uses the term tempeloupoli (lazy town) to stress the
touristic aspect of Edipsos in the late 1930s. Accord-
ing to the author, most visitors chose Edipsos for their
holidays. They frequented the beaches, and they so-
cialised and flirted in the restaurants, cinemas and ho-
tels located along the seafront of the spa town. In con-
trast, restaurant and hotel managers wanted to make
a profit, and they tended to economically exploit the
patients and tourists who visited Edipsos (Lountemis,
2000).
Lountemis claims in his novel that the public of the
spa consisted of men and women of different classes
and social discriminations were evident. The ‘privi-
leged’ visitors stayed at luxurious hotels, while the peo-
ple of lower incomes bathed in the public baths (the
price of a bath was only 10 drachmas) and they stayed
10 | Academica Turistica, Year 12, No. 1, June 2019
Melina Kostidi Visitors to Greek Thermal and Seaside Spas
at smaller and cheaper hotels. The author states that in
the late 1930s Edipsos was a cosmopolitan resort, since
European tourists and Greeks from Alexandria spent
their holidays there. Although in this period Edipsos
was a destination for holidaymakers, there were still
a large number of patients who hoped that the use of
thermal springs of the spa town could offer them ther-
apy. Unfortunately, their hope for a cure did not al-
ways come true. One such case was the one of an el-
derly patient in the novel, who hoped to walk without
his crutch and he was deeply disappointed when he
left the spa town holding two crutches instead of one
(Lountemis, 2000)!
Another category of the public of Greek seaside
and thermal resorts was the children who travelled to
the baths with their family. Elias Papadimitrakopou-
los (1995) describes the journey by train to the baths
of Katakolo in Peloponnese from the point of view of
a child in his autobiographical novel, Therma Thalas-
sia Loutra (Hot Water Baths). When he was a child,
the novelist travelled to the baths every summer with
his aunt, who suffered from rheumatism. The trip to
the baths was a matter of significant importance, and
therefore, every year, she made all the proper arrange-
ments. She wore her hat from Trieste (which she kept
hidden the rest of the year), she cleaned her black scarf,
and she put their snack in a straw basket. The sea baths
were very popular in the pre-war period, as there was
a special first-class ticket for the hot water baths. This
ticket was granted to the ticketholders who could af-
ford to travel in the special wagon for bathers. The
first-class passengers could sit in the luxurious and
comfortable straw seats. It should be noted that the
novelist names the wagon ‘a true sanctuary,’ which im-
plies the social distinction between the privileged and
poorer bathers (Papadimitrakopoulos, 1995).
Conclusion
In this paper, I have attempted to present the world of
Greek thermal and seaside resorts in the two phases
of Greek baths. A corpus of different primary sources
provided interesting facts about the profile of Greek
spas’ visitors. These patients and visitors were a diverse
world that consisted of people of different origin and
residence, income, education, and interests. However,
all of them had one goal in common: both the wealthy
and the poor and the patients who visited the thermal
springs of Greek resorts hoped to recover or at least
find some relief. They were encouraged by their doc-
tors to make use of the baths and, depending on their
financial status; they resided for or longer periods in
Greek resorts. It can be claimed that the public played
a vital role in the architectural improvement of the ur-
ban space Greek spas, as the increasing demands for
bettermedical, accommodation and entertainment fa-
cilities led to the construction of the necessary ameni-
ties, which were often of European standards.
In the first period, the public made limited use of
thermal waters, and began to timidly trust the baths
of Kythnos. As this ‘relationship of trust’ between the
Greek baths and their public gradually grew stronger,
other seaside and thermal spas developed. At the end
of the first period, their urban space improved sig-
nificantly due to the construction of luxury hotels
and entertainment facilities. The first visitors came
mainly from the middle strata and travelled alone or
with family members. In the second period of devel-
opment of Greek resorts, their heyday, a shift in the
profile of visitors was observed. As statistics and pa-
tients testimonies revealed, the public of Greek spas
was amounted to thousands and consisted mostly of
vacationers. Thus, the sea and the thermal baths, the
square, the pier, luxury hotels, casinos and restaurants
attracted the interest of visitors and transformed the
Greek spas to popular destinations of domestic and
incoming tourism.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Professor Tomi Brezovec and Mr
Allan Brodie for their helpful comments on this pa-
per. I would also like to thank Associate Professor Anna
Matthaiou for her supervision and support of the thesis
from which this material is drawn, and the Foundation
for Education and European Culture (ipep) for their fi-
nancial assistance.
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