This highly readable guide to Bath details the entire history of the historic city, from the Roman period to the present day, as well as its historic architecture, thermal springs, and other attractions.

Any time spent in Bath is a pleasure. The historic city buzzes with vitality and its accolade as one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites is confirmed by the annual arrival of some four million visitors from Britain and all over the world. Whereas most accounts of Bath’s history focus on the Roman and Georgian periods, skipping over much of the rest, this short history offers a chronological survey of the entire span of Bath’s existence, supplemented by lively accounts of its food, its fashions, its theatrical and artistic heritage, its music, and its memorials. Almost two-thirds of the city center is a conservation area, the largest in Britain. One in six of the city’s houses was built before 1850, almost half before the twentieth century. The city’s highlights include not only the Roman baths, the elegant Pump Room and the majestic abbey, and half a dozen museums, but also one of only four bridges in the world with shops on both sides and Britain’s last remaining Georgian pleasure gardens. With the opening of the striking new Thermae Spa complex, Bath entered the twenty-first century by reasserting its original identity as a uniquely therapeutic location.