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© EHTTA Directed by: Marie Thomas-Penette Actors: Blanche Giraud-Beauregardt, Emilie Voisin,  Pierre Diependaële, Xavier Boulanger, Gaëtean Plein, Michel Thomas-Penette, Phillipe Peychaud

The city of Spa, located in the Ardennes, Belgium, has been popular since the 17th century. As a result, it invented health tourism, which included leisure activities for illustrious visitors with the creation of grand hotels with evocative names (such as Aux Armes d’Angleterre or La Fontaine d’Or) and the La Redoute casino, the first modern gambling establishment. The springs, known locally as pouhons, have their own pavilions. In 1880, architect Victor Besme designed the Pierre le Grand pouhon building, near to the Prince de Condé pouhon. After his stay in 1871, Joseph II nicknamed Spa ‘the Café of Europe’. Indeed, in the 18th century, the town created the true ancestors of celebrity magazines in the form of the liste des seigneurs et dames and gazettes. In the late 19th century, Albin Body commissioned a painting which constituted the ‘guestbook’ of all the celebrity visitors past and present, and in doing so capture in the same image Casanova, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and stull Marie Deplessis, the famous Lady of the Camellias, his son’s mistress. More recently in this city, which is also the venue of the Francofolies festival, large projects have been undertaken, such as the new thermal centre and its panoramic funicular railway which connects it to the city centre. Large-scale investments have been put into the Casino’s gambling halls and into restoring the Pouhon Pierre le Grand, which now houses the Tourist Office, into developing and modernising the concert halls and theatre, and into the hospitality sector.

Spa
THEY WERE THERE...

 

“I sit down. I notice several drinkers of water counting religiously their glasses and their steps, and congratulating each other, thongh rather dismally, on the progress of their stomachs. I listen. "Do the waters pass you, madame?" inquires an old president. — "Yes, monsieur, since yesterday." "Does your Excellency begin to digest ? " asks another of the minister of an ecclesiastical Court. " I have the honour to inform your Excellency," replies the minister, " that I perspire in the evening from eight to ten o'clock, and from ten to midnight I sweat thoroughly ; in fact, if I had not so much to do for Monseigneur, I should now have completed my cure.”

Charles-Joseph de Ligne, Marshall, Diplomat and Man of letters

 

 

“After walking slowly around the streets between Pouhon Pierre le Grand and Place Royale – Gaëtan knew how to feed the curiosity of the visitors following him around town and as such controlled the rhythm of his group – we had suddenly speed up to the point where we reached the Casino, as if we could not be late for an important meeting.”

VALERY Source

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PRACTICAL INFORMATION

 

 

 

City of Spa website

 

Tourist office

Pouhon Pierre le Grand
Rue du Marché 1A  4900 SPA

Tel: +32 (0) 87 79 53 53

 

 

 

 

Spa thermal baths

 

 

 

 

 

Francofolies Music Festival website

 

Spa Tribute Festival

 

Spa Theatre Festival

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