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Olmarova Upper square · Olomouc
The quiet half

Wellness

This isn't a spa in the brochure sense. What we have is a sauna cut into the rock, a cold room beside it, a tree, and a landing with chairs on it. All four are free to guests, and none can be booked through a screen.

A drawing of the sauna chamber: a brick barrel vault over a wooden bench, with a stove and a ladle and bucket beside it.
Second cellar chamber: vault, bench for six, and the 2011 stove.

How the hour works

The desk keeps a paper list, two hours held at a time. Write your name against an hour and it is yours. The list is cleared each night and started again at seven in the morning.

The Vault Sauna

It is in the second cellar chamber, which was a brewhouse until 1881: a brick barrel vault, a wooden bench for six, and a stove put in during the 2011 works that has given no trouble since. The brick holds heat long after the stove is shut down, so the last hour of the evening is the gentlest.

It runs dry at about 85 degrees, with a bucket and a ladle for anyone who wants it damper. Towels are in the changing room. Nobody attends it: the house trusts guests with a stove and hasn't regretted it.

Open
Daily, 16:00 to 22:00
Capacity
Six on the bench; booked by the hour at the desk
Access
Cellar stair from the hall; no lift to this level
Cost
Included for guests
A drawing of the cold room: a glazed brick plunge trough with a handrail, a slatted bench and a slot window at pavement level.
Glazed brick trough, slot window at pavement level, one lamp.

Water

The cold tap runs at about ten degrees in winter and fourteen in August, straight off the city main, which in Olomouc comes from the gravels under the river. The water is neither chilled nor heated on the way.

The Cold Room

The chamber next door is unheated, and one lamp is its only light. It holds a plunge trough in glazed brick, two slatted benches and a window slot at pavement level that lets in a draught of outside air. The room is small and not pretty, but people who know their way around a sauna spend as long in here as in the heat.

Open
With the sauna, 16:00 to 22:00
Trough
Mains cold, refilled between hours
Note
Step down of 300 mm into the trough; hold the rail
A drawing of the pollarded linden in the courtyard, with two benches beneath it and the arcade of the 1748 wing behind.
The pollarded linden, two benches, and the arcade of the 1748 wing.

What grows there

Besides the linden: box in four tubs, a wall of ivy on the 1748 wing, a bed of lavender that the kitchen cuts for the cellar tables, and a quince that has fruited twice in eleven years and is kept anyway.

The Linden Courtyard

The courtyard is gravel, one large tree and the back of the house on three sides. The gate to the passage is shut at one in the morning, which closes the courtyard off completely and is why guests sit out here late. Chairs stay out from April to October; in winter there are two benches under the arcade and a brazier that the porter lights if asked.

Open
All hours to guests
Served
Breakfast and the cellar card in season
Quiet from
22:00, by agreement with the neighbours
A drawing of the reading room on the half-landing: a tall window, a long table with a lamp and an open book, and a wall of shelves.
The half-landing: one window, one table, four hundred volumes.

The shelves

About four hundred volumes: Moravian history, a long run of a botanical journal, architecture, and a shelf of novels left behind by guests. Borrowing is on the honour system. Books do come back, mostly.

The Reading Room

It sits on the half-landing of the stone stair, by the window, with four chairs, a long table, a lamp each, and a rule against telephone calls that is printed on a card and generally obeyed. The light is good from about ten in the morning until four, and in December it is the warmest spot in the house.

Open
All hours to guests
Seats
Four
Rule
No calls, no meetings, no laptops after 18:00
Nearby

If you want more water than we have

The house has no pool and isn't about to build one. The municipal baths are fifteen minutes away on foot across the park, with a 25-metre pool and an outdoor one in summer, and the desk can give you the hours and sell you a tram ticket. For the full programme, the spa town on the Bystrice is forty minutes by bus.

What else is close