Bad Nauheim
— — the Jugendstil courtyard the steam still rises through.
Not only on a wall.
“A spa town with two stories layered tightly. The Sprudelhof bathhouse complex, finished in 1911, is one of the largest closed Jugendstil ensembles in Europe: tiled fountains, copper-clad cupolas, mosaic walls. Half a century later, Elvis Presley lived a short walk from the park, on Goethestrasse, during his army years. The town still carries both quietly.
Bad Nauheim, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Bad Nauheim is a spa town in the Wetterau district of Hesse, about 35 km north of Frankfurt am Main. Population is around 33,000. The town developed on a field of saline springs known since the Middle Ages and was reshaped between 1905 and 1911 around the Sprudelhof, a closed Jugendstil bathhouse complex. The town received its Bad designation, the German title for a recognised spa town, in 1869. Reach it by S-Bahn line S6 from Frankfurt in under forty minutes, or by intercity train on the Main–Weser line.
The Sprudelhof was designed by Wilhelm Jost with artists from the Darmstadt Künstlerkolonie, and built from 1905 to 1911 around six saline springs feeding seven bath houses arranged on a single courtyard. Mosaic walls, hand-painted ceramic tiles, copper-clad cupolas, and stained glass remain almost entirely intact. The complex is listed as a cultural monument of Hesse and is considered the largest closed Jugendstil ensemble in Europe. It still operates as part of the town's thermal cure facilities, alongside the long graduated saline towers in the surrounding park.
Private Elvis Presley arrived in West Germany in October 1958 with the U.S. Third Armored Division and spent most of his army service in Bad Nauheim. He stayed first at the Hotel Grunewald, then in a rented house at Goethestrasse 14, where he lived with his father and grandmother until March 1960. A memorial plaque marks the house. The town hosts the European Elvis Festival each August, drawing several thousand fans from across Europe for a multi-day programme of concerts and parades through the centre.