Bath

Several Bronze Age round barrows (burial mounds) near Bath were opened by John Skinner in the 1700s.

The Romans probably arrived here soon after they reached Britain in AD 43. Their military road, the Fosse Way, crossed the River Avon at Bath.

In the 100s, the baths were enclosed in a wooden building with a curved roof, with a caldarium (hot bath), tepidarium (warm bath) and frigidarium (cold bath). By the 200s, the town had become an important walled temple and bath complex that seems to have attracted visitors.

In 1979–80, 130 'curse tablets' from Roman times were found in the sacred spring. In 2014 they were added to UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register.

In 2012, archaeologists dug up a hoard of 30,000 silver Roman coins near the baths, one of the largest hoards found in Britain. The coins are believed to date from the 200s.

After Roman rule in Britain ended around AD 410, the baths fell into disrepair and were eventually lost under silt and floods.

Later people kept the old Roman town walls, and in the 600s a monastery was set up inside them. It grew into Bath Abbey.

A poem from the 700s, called The Ruin, describes a decayed Roman city and its hot springs.

In 878 Bath became a royal borough (burh) of Alfred the Great, laid out inside the old Roman walls. A document called the Burghal Hidage says its walls were 1,375 yards long and that 1,000 men were given to defend them.

By the Domesday Survey of 1086, Bath was the largest town in Somerset, with a thriving monastery, a mint, a market and 178 burgesses.

In 1090 John of Tours became the first Bishop of Bath and began a huge new cathedral. He also built a healing bath over the King's Spring. The half-built cathedral was badly damaged by fire in 1137, but work went on until about 1156.

Bishop Reginald Fitz Jocelin founded St John's Hospital around 1180. It is among the oldest almshouses in England.

Around 1200, Bath's first mayor was appointed, and the first guildhall was probably built in the same century. The city's mayors can be traced back to 1230; the mayor for 2026–27 is the 799th.

When Bishop Oliver King visited in 1499, he was shocked to find the abbey church 'ruined to its foundations'. In 1500 he decided to rebuild it on a smaller scale. It was finished just a few years before Henry VIII closed the priory in 1539.

The roofless abbey was given to the town in 1572. In 1574 Queen Elizabeth I backed its restoration and ordered a national fund to pay for it, and in 1583 it became Bath's parish church. Her royal charter of 1590 confirmed that Bath was a city.

On 19 May 1613, Anne of Denmark, James I's queen, was bathed in the King's Bath by the court physician, and she came back in 1615. The Queen's Bath was named after her.

When war broke out in 1642, Bath lost much of its visitor trade. The city was first held for Charles I, but surrendered to Parliament's forces. In July 1643, after the Battle of Lansdowne, the royalists took it back and held it until 1645.

From 1704 until he died in 1761, Beau Nash was Bath's master of ceremonies. He wrote a code of behaviour for public entertainments.

In 1727, a trench dug for a new sewer in Stall Street uncovered the gilded bronze head of the goddess Sulis Minerva, still one of Bath's greatest Roman treasures.

The Bath Oliver, a dry baked biscuit, was invented by Dr William Oliver, physician to the Mineral Water Hospital in 1740.

Most of Bath is built from golden Bath stone. Its most spectacular terrace, the Royal Crescent, designed by the younger John Wood, was built from 1767 and finished in the mid-1770s. It was first called just 'The Crescent'; 'Royal' is said to have been added after the Duke of York stayed there.

The Pulteney family's Bathwick estate, across the river, could only be reached by ferry. Pulteney Bridge, designed by Robert Adam from an unused design by Palladio for the Rialto Bridge in Venice, was finished by 1774 at a cost of £11,000. Its narrow street is lined with shops on both sides.

Thomas Baldwin began the Grand Pump Room in 1789, and John Palmer finished it in 1799. Rebuilding work in 1790–93 uncovered the front of the Roman temple, with a Gorgon's head in the middle.

The writer Jane Austen moved to Bath in 1801 with her father, mother and sister Cassandra. The family lived at four different addresses until 1806.

Cleveland Pools were built around 1815 by the River Avon. They are the oldest surviving public outdoor lido in England, and after a 20-year fundraising campaign they reopened on 10 September 2023 for the first time in 40 years.

Royal Victoria Park was opened in 1830 by 11-year-old Princess Victoria. It was the first park to carry her name.

Bath Spa station opened in 1840 on the Great Western Main Line. It was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

In the 1870s, William Friese-Greene experimented with celluloid and moving pictures in his studio in Bath, developing some of the earliest movie camera technology.

Money raised from the public paid for nearby buildings to be bought and knocked down, and by 1881 most of the Romans' Great Bath had been uncovered. By 1896 most of the baths were excavated and given new buildings and statues on the Roman foundations, and soon opened to the public.

Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia spent four years in exile in Bath, from 1936 to 1940, at Fairfield House.

Between 25 and 27 April 1942, Bath suffered three air raids, in revenge for RAF raids on the German cities of Lübeck and Rostock. The raids were part of what's known as the Baedeker Blitz.

In 1987, UNESCO made Bath a World Heritage Site for its international cultural importance. In 2021 it became part of a second one, the 'Great Spas of Europe': 11 spa towns in 7 countries.

Thermae Bath Spa opened on 7 August 2006, three years later than planned. It made Bath the only place in the UK where visitors can bathe in naturally heated spring water.

Bath's streets often appear in films and TV. The Royal Crescent was first used in the Netflix series Bridgerton in 2020, and in later seasons too.