Published July 1, 2026 03:51AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In one of the most economically depressed neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., on a warm fall afternoon, woodsmoke rises from a vacant lot. That tells me I am headed in the right direction. Exiting the Anacostia Metro station, on a bright afternoon, I chart a course toward the smoke. In less than five minutes, I arrive at an unlikely scene for this part of town: a bustling pop-up village consisting of six mobile saunas arranged in a loose circle around a patch of astroturf.<\/p>\n
Dozens of people wait for their turn in the saunas; in the biggest one, a refitted shipping container with one side entirely made of glass, a lithe blonde woman runs a sound bath class for a full house of about 25 people. In the smaller sauna next door, a friendly yoga instructor from Tampa leads the quirkiest breathwork class I\u2019ve ever experienced: first she asks us to quack like ducks, then buzz like bees. We comply until our buzzing bursts into laughter. \u201cLaughing is breath work!\u201d insists the instructor, Annette Scott.<\/p>\n
Over to one side of the village, well-steamed saunagoers line up to dip in a large, wood-sided tub of clear, cold water. Just past that, in a big white tent, more bodies are bending, twisting, and sweating on stretchy mats; the yoga and Pilates classes are packed all day long. There\u2019s also locally-blended herbal tea on tap, a stocked bar, and a barbecue truck offering half-smokes, a D.C. delicacy that is like a chili dog but indescribably better. (If you know, you know.)<\/p>\n
A pop-up sauna village is a common sight in hipster havens like Minneapolis, Seattle, and Burning Man. A large and splashy sauna festival, with 16 wood-burning saunas in a park beside the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, wrapped up in March. The one in D.C., held last October, took place in a far less hipster-friendly spot: Anacostia, the historically poorest part of town, across the Anacostia River (a tributary of the Potomac) and worlds away from the monuments and government buildings that we see on the news.<\/p>\n
Every afternoon, commuters zoom right past this spot without stopping, on freeways whisking them to greener suburbs. They\u2019re missing out: Anacostia is also known for Cedar Hill, the historic home of Frederick Douglass, as well as the former St. Elizabeth\u2019s mental institution, acres of forested parklands, and the occasional pair of nesting bald eagles.<\/p>\n
Today, however, this little corner of Anacostia is jammed\u2014with neighborhood residents, who make up about 30 percent of the attendees, but also with people from the suburbs. I sit next to one father-son duo who drove 45 minutes from Virginia.<\/p>\n
Most people are in shorts or bathing suits\u2014which are available to rent\u2014but not everyone is dressed for the occasion. I pop into one of the smaller saunas to find a tall, elegant-looking woman, dressed in voluminous linen pants and a tailored top, both of which are completely soaked\u2014from sweat, or from a trip to the cold plunge, I can\u2019t tell. Maybe both. She hopped into the sauna village on the spur of the moment, as she was headed somewhere else, and now she seems in no hurry at all to leave. Leaning back, eyes closed, she murmurs, \u201cWe need this all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her wish might come true.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n This two-day event<\/strong>\u2014along with this winter\u2019s better-publicized sauna pop-up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn\u2014is a kind of stalking horse for a much bigger project. Both events were staged by a mysterious European company called the Therme Group, which recently announced plans to build a massive bathing complex\u2014with multiple saunas, huge soaking pools, several waterslides, and an indoor botanical garden\u2014just a few yards away, on a vacant tract of federal parkland beside the Anacostia River. The approximate price tag of the project: $500 million.<\/p>\n Therme DC is just one of seven such projects that the Therme Group is planning for cities around the world, including Manchester, UK (which just began construction), Toronto, Singapore, Frankfurt, Incheon (near Seoul), Dubai, Dallas, and right here in Anacostia. That\u2019s only a beginning: the company says it eventually plans to build no fewer than ten Therme complexes, or Thermes, in North America alone.<\/p>\n While most Americans have never heard of Therme, it is better known in Europe, where the company owns and operates five massive and popular bathing parks. Four are in Germany, but the newest one\u2014and the template for future expansion\u2014is located just outside Bucharest, Romania.<\/p>\n Despite its out-of-the-way location, Therme Bucharest has grown into a global tourist destination and Instagram hotspot, a sprawling 470,000-square-foot structure with ten soaking pools, 16 water slides, and 16 saunas under its vast roof\u2014plenty to entertain its 1.7 million annual visitors.<\/p>\n Therme Manchester, set to open in 2028, will be twice the size of Therme Bucharest. Therme DC will rival the scale of Nationals Park, the baseball stadium just across the river. When finished, it will dwarf the three shiny new ten-story apartment buildings that have sprung up just across the road from the vacant lot where the sauna village sits, the vanguard of the neighborhood\u2019s redevelopment.<\/p>\n Plans are not yet final, but Therme DC will occupy 17 acres of former federal land beside the Anacostia River, with a soaring steel and glass roof that will be visible for miles around, including from planes landing at Reagan National Airport, just across the Potomac. Therme and the city of Washington D.C. estimate that the project will employ 5,000 construction workers and more than 700 permanent employees.<\/p>\n These grand plans make the head spin. But while Therme and similar spa complexes are familiar in Europe, especially Germany, they are definitely not a thing in North America. After Therme DC was announced last spring, I had a difficult time grasping what, exactly, it might look like, let alone how to describe it to people. Other North Americans seem similarly confused. In Toronto, opposition to the Therme construction<\/a> has been particularly sharp, as locals protested the decision to award Therme development rights to part of a treasured yet neglected lakefront park.<\/p>\n The skeptical Conspirituality health podcast slagged the project as a \u201cMAHA wellness scam.\u201d<\/p>\n What actually was this thing? Nobody seemed to know for sure.<\/p>\n So I flew to Bucharest to see for myself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Moments after stumbling<\/strong> off my stuffy Romanian Airlines flight, I run into the president of Therme U.S., Robbie Hammond. He is easy to spot, in his custom-tailored pink button-down shirt with the letters SOAK stitched across the middle. Also, he is the only person in the Bucharest airport who is smiling.<\/p>\n As a young advertising executive in the late nineties, Hammond had co-founded Friends of the High Line, the fundraising and advocacy group that transformed an abandoned elevated railway line on the fringes of Manhattan\u2019s west side into a thriving neighborhood park and global tourist attraction. That blockbuster success is why Therme Group hired him to help realize its two U.S. projects, the one in Washington D.C. and the other in Dallas.<\/p>\n Despite his outsized ambition, Hammond is friendly and easygoing in person, which makes sense. Therme\u2019s primary product is relaxation, as I\u2019m about to learn. An hour after landing, we are floating in an enormous warm pool, gazing up at palm trees, a glass roof, and the late-afternoon sky above as our jet lag melts away.<\/p>\n Therme Bucharest styles itself as a wellness oasis, a place where guests can do healthyish things like water aerobics, soaking in mineral baths, or sweating in saunas\u2014followed by a cocktail or a glass of wine, if they choose. It\u2019s like Wellness Lite.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like a gym,\u201d Hammond had told me. \u201cIt\u2019s like a wellness Disney World.\u201d<\/p>\n There are three zones at Therme Bucharest: The Palm, the main area with a sprawling, quarter-acre indoor\/outdoor pool, kept at a comfortable 91 degrees Fahrenheit. There are also a dozen or so mineral and soaking pools; Elysium, featuring 16 saunas and steam baths, each with a different ambiance (and heat level), plus treatment rooms for massages, and an outdoor patio for relaxing and sipping drinks. Kids are only allowed in a separate, family-friendly area called Galaxy, which has some pretty thrilling waterslides.<\/p>\n It feels like a spa married to a tropical resort, next to a Great Wolf Lodge-style water park, all beneath a soaring steel-and-glass canopy that rises from the surrounding plain like a fancy new airport terminal.<\/p>\n Bucharest seems an unlikely spot for a wellness mecca. Pinned between Bulgaria, Serbia, and Ukraine, the former Communist nation of Romania has an average life expectancy of 76.6 years, even lower than that of the U.S.\u2014a dubious achievement for a European nation. (Most EU members way outperform the U.S. average lifespan of 79.6.) Fully one-third of the male population of Romania smokes, and another third admits to binge drinking.<\/p>\n One of Therme\u2019s stated goals is to try to solve this problem, in Romania and beyond. Which seems ambitious, to say the least, but in its proposals and public statements, Therme says it doesn\u2019t just want to build flashy waterparks and resorts, but to make wellness\u2014physical, but also social\u2014accessible to the masses.<\/p>\n Their business model? The ancient Roman baths.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Therme Bucharest is not actually<\/strong> located in the city of Bucharest; instead, it sits on its own in a kind of no-man\u2019s-land between the suburbs and farmland. The nearest hotel is a Hilton Garden Inn, a couple of miles away. Funny spot for a recreation of the ancient Roman baths. While driving out from the center of Bucharest the next morning, battling traffic every inch of the way, I wonder, Why is this here<\/em>?<\/p>\n Free heat is why. The massive complex happens to stand atop a deep geothermal spring, explains Robert Hanea, Therme\u2019s colorful CEO and founder, at a conference table in Therme\u2019s corporate offices, a set of modular buildings across the road from the spa. Hanea had come into possession of this land about 25 years ago, and had thought about building something practical on the site, like a geothermal power plant\u2014his other business is industrial engineering and HVAC\u2014but he decided to build this fantasmal bathing complex instead.<\/p>\n Why not?<\/p>\n He was inspired, he says, by a similar and highly successful facility in Germany called Therme Erding, which opened in 1999 outside Munich and remains the largest thermal spa in the world. Some context: many cities and towns in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have public baths, known as \u201cthermes,\u201d with pools and often saunas. Most are utilitarian facilities that are subsidized by local governments, like public swimming pools. Therme Erding was huge, spectacular, and profitable.<\/p>\n Hanea wanted to create something just as grand in his home country. He befriended Joseph Wund, the German architect who had built Therme Erding, and borrowed from his template to create Therme Bucharest, which is smaller but similar. The two main differences: Therme Erding has a \u201ctextile free\u201d (i.e., nude) zone, while Therme Bucharest requires swimsuits; also, Therme Bucharest is heated by geothermal water\u2014which required workers to drill two miles into the earth in order to access the 175-degree-Fahrenheit underground spring, which heats the place. (Some of the water is filtered, treated, and allowed to cool before being used in the pools).<\/p>\n It worked: Despite its off-the-beaten-path location, Therme Bucharest quickly became a popular European destination, drawing some 1.7 million annual visitors last year\u2014on a par with some U.S. National Parks.<\/p>\n Wund died in a private jet crash in 2017. Last December, Hanea\u2019s Therme acquired the German Therme, bringing all the Thermes under one corporate umbrella\u2014and accelerating its global expansion, as Hanea sought to replicate Therme\u2019s success around the world. He envisions creating dozens of Thermes in city centers around the world.<\/p>\n On my second day, I tagged along on a group visit by community and business leaders from Dallas, where the first U.S. Therme will likely be built. After a friendly chat with Hanea, we trooped across the street to the Therme complex for a behind-the-scenes tour, guided by VP of operations Robert Solomon, a former banker in his fifties who loved bathing at Therme so much that he quit his job and went to work for the company. The pool was nearly empty at 9 A.M., as we filed through a discreet metal door and followed Solomon down two flights of stairs to the bowels of the building, where a massive battery of pumps and fans whined and whirred, keeping air and water moving around as many as 8,000 daily bathers.<\/p>\n Almost as tricky: Keeping palm trees alive indoors, in a climate where winters routinely dip below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Solomon showed us how each of the 1,500-odd palm trees had its own dedicated air and water lines, like a little life-support system for each individual plant. It seems to be working: one palm in particular reached exuberantly toward the 100-foot-high glass roof, which unfortunately means that the tree\u2019s days are likely numbered. \u201cIt will break right through the glass,\u201d Solomon told us, so it will need to be removed.<\/p>\n The most striking thing I noticed during our tour was the smell of the water in the pools. I had braced myself for the usual odor of chlorine, the olfactory signature of North American pools and waterparks (and hot tubs). But there wasn\u2019t one. Deep in the bowels of the facility, Therme officials showed us the complex treatment and filtration system that first puts the required amount of germ-killing chemicals into the water (about \u00bc the concentration required in the U.S.)\u2014and then pulls it back out via a complicated ozonation process that I can\u2019t begin to explain.<\/p>\n All I can say is that it works, and the primary scent in the main pool area comes not from a bleach jug, but from tropical flowers.<\/p>\n Tour over, it was time to hit the pool again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After sunset the night before<\/strong>, the vibe of the place had shifted on a dime\u2014as the sky darkened, moody blue and purple lights came on, illuminating the palm trees and giving the main pool the feeling of a nightclub. Instagrammers Instagrammed on the steps leading into the water, and couples floated around entwined with each other (the pool is adults-only; kids are limited to the \u201cGalaxy\u201d waterslide zone). The music throbbed quietly. The bars got busy. The water was, as always, invitingly warm.<\/p>\n The following morning is completely different: bright, airy, wholesome. I join Hammond and about a hundred women in a water aerobics class led by an energetic young instructor who makes us put our pool noodles through their paces. Relaxed and invigorated, I wander around, sampling the soaking pools infused with magnesium, zinc, and Dead Sea salt, among other minerals\u2014each said to convey specific health benefits. I loll in the lithium-infused pool, which is supposed to improve my mood.<\/p>\n Maybe it does. The sound system plays cheery spa music, which also helps.<\/p>\n As the day progresses, the main pool area gradually fills up with guests from all over Europe and beyond\u2014girls\u2019 trips from Italy, guys\u2019 trips from Berlin. I drift over to the swim-up bar and drink a beer with some working-class Brits, right beside a group of Black American ladies from Atlanta downing fruity cocktails, then repair to the lounging area, where I chat with an Italian architect on a solo getaway. Seeking an adrenaline fix, I dip into the \u201cGalaxy\u201d zone and ride a couple of dizzying waterslides, then return to grab some Mediterranean lunch at the caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n Later, I asked Hammond<\/strong> what this project has in common with the High Line. Three things, he says: high-level design, top-quality plantings (the coddled palm trees), and most of all, the people.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the experience is the people-watching,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s everybody. You see everybody, you see all kinds of bodies, and that\u2019s both at the High Line and at Therme. But it only works when it\u2019s busy.\u201d<\/p>\n Therme is crowded in winter (with Germans wanting to look at palm trees) and summer (with guests from all over wanting a vaguely exotic beach-resort-ish experience, minus the hassle and cost of traveling to an actual beach resort). More than that, I got the sense that it was a place that people go because it\u2019s a place that other people go. The people are part of the attraction, and Instagram keeps them coming, to take selfies against the soaring glass roof, the seductive blue pools, the lush indoor jungle, the sense of scale and space. Which is also part of the attraction.<\/p>\n Therme\u2019s business is based on the German Thermes, but its true inspiration, according to Hanea, is the Roman Baths.<\/p>\n Specifically, the colossal baths of Caracalla, the ruins of which still stand in central Rome. Finished in 216 A.D., the baths of Caracalla rivaled Yankee Stadium in size, drawing an estimated 6,000 visitors a day. The entire system covered 27 acres, and its soaring grandeur has inspired generations of Western architects\u2014such as the builders of the original Pennsylvania Station, for example.<\/p>\n Fabulous and lavish as they were, however, the ancient baths were not only intended for the elite but for everyone. Every city of any size had a bathing complex, with sauna-like warm rooms, steam chambers, bathing pools, and usually a cold room called the frigidarium. The activities were not limited to bathing, either; the larger complexes had sports facilities, food and drink, libraries, even theaters for musical and dramatic performances. Despite their spectacular and obviously expensive architecture, the Roman baths were cheap and often free of charge to use; common people and even slaves were welcome.<\/p>\n \u201cThe luxurious and pleasurable world of baths afforded the greater urban populations a welcome opportunity to escape their overcrowded and cramped living conditions and the dusty streets for a few hours a day and bathe in style,\u201d writes Fikret Yeg\u00fcl, a scholar of classical bathing at the University of California in Santa Barbara. \u201cMoreover, for many, it was their only opportunity to bathe at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Ew, but also, great. More to the point, the baths served as a nexus for urban social and political life; they were the one place where everyone met up. As Yeg\u00fcl writes, the baths represented \u201cthe epitome of democratic ideals in Roman society.\u201d<\/p>\n This, Hanea insists, is what he wants to re-create \u2014 a wellness space that includes rather than excludes, and that is affordable to the masses.<\/p>\n \u201cThis needs to be in the downtown core of cities, and it needs to be one of the most useful things in the city,\u201d Hanea declares at our morning meeting. \u201cIt\u2019s not a \u2018nice\u2019 thing to have; it\u2019s a must thing to have \u2014 a space where people can have positive human interaction, because they want to be together.\u201d<\/p>\n Even VIPs who land at the site\u2019s modest helipad must wait in line; there is no FastPass to skip the queue. \u201cWe have Uber drivers that are coming every day,\u201d he humblebrags.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Walking back from the caf\u00e9<\/strong>, I\u2019m accosted by an attractive couple in matching white logoed polo shirts, wielding iPads. They want to know if I would like to have my body scanned. Okayyy?<\/p>\n They guide me to stand on a circular platform while an expensive-looking camera device whirls around me, capturing my entire body in 3D. This scan, by a company called Phy, then spits a report to my phone with insights about my health based on my posture and stance. Turns out I\u2019d better watch out for my neck and upper spine, which are bowed from decades of riding bikes and sitting at desks writing stories like this one.<\/p>\n Unsure of what to do with this probably useful but somewhat dispiriting knowledge, I decide to go and get a massage. That, in turn, leads me into Elysium, the sauna area, the busiest place in the resort. When Therme Bucharest opened in 2016, it had no saunas at all. Those in place now were built in response to overwhelming demand\u2014plus a new addition, a \u201csustainable\u201d wood-burning sauna on the roof deck, designed by architecture students from Norway.<\/p>\n This week, they are especially busy thanks to Therme\u2019s annual spring \u201cHerbarium\u201d festival, an eclectic gathering of healers and herbalists and performers from across Europe and beyond.<\/p>\n The main attraction is a full slate of \u201caufguss\u201d shows, brief performances held inside the saunas. In its most basic form, aufguss features one or more very athletic performers, dancing around the sauna stove and waving towels to blast spectators with hot air; typically, they will mash ice balls into the hot sauna rocks, often infused with scented oils\u2014mint, evergreen, lemongrass, sage, and more exotic flavors such as moss and Japanese herbs.<\/p>\n Aufguss can be a lot\u2014one doesn\u2019t always want to be smacked in the face with broiling steam\u2014but it does help prevent people from getting bored while slow-roasting in a 180-degree sauna. And, as I learn, at times it can be brilliant.<\/p>\n I squeeze into a few shows, including a \u201csalt ritual\u201d that leaves me sneezing and somewhat confused, a peaceful sound therapy session, and a woodsy but vague \u201cforest bathing\u201d experience accented with mushrooms and piney scents. The most powerful is an \u201coperatic catharsis\u201d by a fit, intense Norwegian man whose rendition of \u201cE lucevan le stelle\u201d from Tosca has half the house sobbing as we file out.<\/p>\n Outside the sauna, I spot a sweaty, shirtless Hanea, who\u2019d snuck in incognito.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/dreamstime_l_139732626.jpg?auto=webp&width=3840&quality=75&fit=cover\"\/)
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