Dripping with luxury

For centuries, the spa has been considered curative, essential to the rituals of purification and health. Steam baths and mud baths have been utilized since -Hippocrates’ time, and continue to be used today. Of course the ancients mostly went to public baths, which became social gathering places.

Today, the most sought-after spa is a very private luxury -- an homage not only to relaxation and fitness but also to an individual’s financial health. Like having an elaborate home theater or a full-fledged recording studio built into one’s home, the built-in spa nowadays speaks volumes about the ability to appreciate serenity -- and to pay for it.

This book is a globe-trotter’s catalog of the vast range of elaborate, extravagant and sometimes exquisite temples built to praise the power of water. Vast, indoor swimming pools are evidently no longer enough. They must be surrounded by a variety of specialized tubs, saunas, showers and hydrotherapy contraptions that are now possibly considered de rigueur among the uber-rich.

In Darmstadt, Germany, a homeowner has built an extraordinary, soaring, white-walled pavilion, almost like a church, which houses a sauna, swimming pool, two hydro-massage showers and a hydro-massage bath.

In Spain, the extravagant bathroom of a home features a sculptural hydro massage tub centered in the room on a floor of lights, surrounded by two “his and hers” enclosed hydro-therapy showers and two free-standing hydro-massage cabins.

The immense bathroom in an apartment that overlooks Manhattan’s Central Park opens onto the master bedroom at one end and onto the terrace on the other.

There is something disturbing about this book, which lacks warmth, personality and information. It offers few useful facts about the specific houses shown, the materials used in the baths, their approximate sizes and costs. It offers scant information about the humans who live in these places with such sybaritic soaking spots.

The photos are fine and may be helpful for those about to embark on construction. A section at the back shows some of the latest equipment available and the names of manufacturers. But the spirituality so central to the subject of spas is utterly lacking in the text.

-- Bettijane Levine