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Bath Accommodation

Bath is a beautiful city excellent for both short breaks or longer stays

Bath's Georgian architecture is second to none

Bath is also a leafy and green city with several parks

Pulteney Street has often been used as a location in films

Bath Abbey's Gothic architecture is beautiful and intricate

Pulteney Bridge - unusual in that it has shops across its span

Bath is most famous for its Roman Baths and its hot mineral springs

Street entertainment in Bath's Abbey Churchyard

The Circus - another fantastic example of Georgian architecture

Bath has a good shopping centre open all week

Bath's parks are good for picnics abd resting weay feet!

City of Bath History and Tourist Information

Bath is world famous for its Roman Baths and Georgian architecture. It is hugely popular, attracting visitors from all over the world. As such there is an excellent choice of hotel and bed and breakfast accommodation both within the City of Bath and around the historic centre.

Bath is excellent for a romantic or luxury break with many hotels offering top end quality accommodation. This means that the standard of all hotel and bed and breakfast is of generally of high quality so even the lower priced accommodation outside the historic centre offer good quality accommodation. Often those guest houses, bed and breakfasts and hotels outside the centre of Bath are only a short walk away but offer better value for money. Bath has a compact but full shopping centre with a mix of high street stores and independent boutique shops. Many of the shops are open seven days a week. There is also a good choice of cafes, restaurants and tearooms - many offering top quality menus perfect for the romantic dinner for two.

Featured Somerset Accommodation

Bloomfield House Hotel - Bath

Eco-friendly Georgian hotel set in elegant surroundings in Bath. Children & pets welcome. Conference & seminar facilities available

£70 to £140 Per person B&B (2 sharing)

Bath History

It is thought that the Celtic people that inhabited the West Country settled on the site of Bath after discovering the health benefits of the hot muddy swamps that bubbled away here before the Romans founded the thermal spa, Aquae Sulis in the first century AD.

It has since been an important centre during the successive periods of history and it gradually became a centre for the production of woollen cloth during the Middle Ages.

When the woollen industry started to fall into decline, Bath became a convalescence centre as people sought the health giving powers of the thermal spas once more. Bath grew in stature over the years due to Royal patronage and by the 18th century Bath had become a fashionable place to be seen and visit by the gentry - often visited by the wealthy and famous such as Jane Austen who often visited and spend three years living here.

Bath Tourist Information

The Tourist Information Centre in Bath is in the heart of the historic centre by the Abbey. It is open all year round Jun-Sept Mon-Sat 9.30am-6pm; Oct-May 9.30am-5pm. Sundays 10am-4pm all year.

Bath Tourist Information Centre, Abbey Chambers, Abbey Churchyard, Bath BA1 1LY. Tel: 0906 711 2000 (50p/min). E-mail: tourism@bathtourism.co.uk.

To make the most out of your visit to Bath you can buy the Bath Visitor Card which gives you discounts to over thirty five businesses in and around the city. These include money off food, drink, shopping, attractions such as The Fashion Museum, Bath Postal Museum, Holbourne Museum of Art and The Jane Austen Centre and sightseeing tours such as Boat Trips and the Thermae Bath Spa Visitor Centre. They are valid for three weeks from the date of purchase and you can buy them from the Tourist Information Centre or online from the Visit Bath website, link right.

City Sightseeing Tours Bath

Bath's historic centre and most of the tourist attractions are in a relatively compact area of Bath. Touring the centre on an open top bus sightseeing tour is a nice, easy way of getting an introduction where everything is.

If you want to exercise those legs there are a wide choice of walking tours of all the sights or themed tours such as the Jane Austen Walking Tour organised by the Jane Austen Centre. If you want to find your way around independently the Visit Bath website has some downloadable Mp3 tours to introduce you to the city and its attractions.

Roman Baths Bath England

The Roman Baths is the big attraction that is a must-see for most visitors to Bath. What you see here now is the Roman Baths complex built by the Romans that contained heated rooms, steam rooms, massage rooms and of course the Great Bath in the centre into which the hot spring water was channelled. It was all once of a much larger complex that included a temple and where visiting Romans could clean themselves and relax.

A visit here will take you into a museum area where Roman artefacts, mosaic floors, masonry and reconstructions help you get a sense of what the Roman site would have looked like. You can then roam around the different parts of what remains of the Roman baths today and see the tiles that would have supported a floor under which the heating system circulated, former massage and steam rooms, plunge pools and the aqua-coloured pool where the hot spring still bubbles to the surface. The Great Bath is the centrepiece of the site and is where Romans would have languished letting the mineral rich water envelop their already cleaned and pampered bodies. You can even see the old drains that moved water around the complex where the steam rises as the spa waters splash through and out of the site.

Bath Abbey

The centre of Bath is dominated by the beautiful Gothic Abbey. You can spend hours just looking at all the intricate carvings on the outside, let alone the interior. There is a regular programme of services and concerts including Christmas Carol Services. Bath Abbey Choir are well known having performed at the Three Tenors for the opening of Thermae Spa and made several recordings.

Georgian Architecture Bath

Bath has also been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its fantastic examples of Palladian Georgian Architecture. It's like walking around a film set and it's amazing how well preserved the historic centre of Bath is. When the Austen Festival is taking place with people walking around the streets in period costume it really is like travelling back in time.

Architects John Wood the Elder and his son John Wood the Younger were responsible for some of the most iconic architecture of Bath such as The Royal Crescent and The Circus.

The Royal Crescent is actually thirty residential houses that was built between 1767 and 1774. It is one of the best examples of Georgian architecture in the country.

The Circus is an earlier Wood construction just down the road that was built between 1754 and 1768. It is considered to be John Wood the Elder's masterpiece whose inspiration was the Roman Colosseum.

Bath Museums

Bath has huge choice of different museums for its relatively small size. There's everything from the world famous Roman Baths with its hot springs to The Fashion Museum that looks at the changing face of fashion from Georgian to Punk! Some are related to Bath's social history such as The Jane Austen Centre and the Bath at Work Museum, while others show how Bath in its Georgian heyday would have looked such as at No 1 The Royal Crescent.

There is something to suit everyone from high brow intellectuals to families looking for a fun day out. Check out Bath Museums page for more museums and places to visit during your stay.

Jane Austen Centre Bath

One of the more recent attractions is The Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street. This is hugely popular and caters for the never-ending fascination people have with Jane Austen, her life and works. Jane Austen visited Bath and lived here between 1801 to 1806. She first visited Bath in 1799 at the age of 21 with her mother not long after she finished writing Northanger Abbey under its former title "Susan". Both her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion use Bath and areas around Somerset as a backdrop. Bath's season and the etiquette with which the gentry conducted themselves was typical of that often humorously examined in Austen's novels and it is highly likely that Jane Austen found much inspiration from her stays in Bath.

The Jane Austen Centre is housed in one of the Georgian terraced townhouses on Gay Street leading up to The Circus. Jane Austen lived at 25 Gay Street during 1805. Its displays, including period costumes, and information take you through Jane Austen's life and work and the importance of Bath within it. The Centre is very active in all things to do with Austen and has organised a variety of exhibitions such as one displaying several costumes that were designed by Andrea Galer for ITV's adaptation of Persuasion.

Bath Art Galleries

Bath is home to several art galleries including the Holburne Museum of Art, the Victoria Art Gallery and the Museum of East Asian Art.

These are all based on private collections that were left to the galleries and include fine art, old masters, silverware, English Delftware, Chinese jade. Collections are constantly being updated or contemporary works are often included in the changing exhibitions hosted at the museums and galleries. Check our Bath Art Galleries page for more information.

Theatres in Bath Murder Mystery

Bath has five theatres - Bath Theatre Royal, Ustinov Studio, the Egg, the Rondo Theatre, and the Mission Theatre.

This means you can find anything from a national touring production to a locally created performance of theatre, music, comedy to suit all tastes. You can also organise a Murder Mystery evening with the Next Stage Theatre Company based at The Mission Theatre.