Therme Group’s Romanian bathing resort Therme Bucharest is currently hosting its Herbarium Festival (4-17 May), offering guests a chance to explore sauna and steamroom experiences performed by 92 aufguss saunamasters and therapists from 26 countries.

From rituals using fresh botanical infusions, smoke smudging to rare rituals for wellbeing, Therme Bucharest says the festival offers 800 experiences. These include Aufguss ceremonies, face scrubs and mask application, postural alignment therapies, sound therapy, crystal therapy and workshops.

This is the fourth edition of the event, which takes place annually. Andrada Seitan, marketing and PR director for Therme Bucharest, told Spa Business that its German sites, acquired by Therme Group in December, are planning to incorporate the festival in future.

Access to the festival activations include access to the complex’s Elysium area (for relaxation) and costs 162 lei (US$36, €32, £27) for 4.5 hours between Monday and Thursday or 177 lei (US$39, €35, £30) at weekends. This ticket is available for guests who are 14 years old and over and grants the holder access to the other two areas for families within the resort (Galaxy and Palm). Each experience has limited availability and required a separate, free festival wristband. Guests are limited to four wristbands per day.

Practitioners come from locations such as Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, Mexico, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Denmark, Switzerland, Colombia, Brazil, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Italy, Finland, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, the US and the UK.

The operator has installed a Sound Tree of tubular bells, manufactured by Sew Handpan in collaboration with artist Paolo Borghi, for communal musical experiences.

Various musical performances are also taking place in the property’s largest sauna. 

Exotic fruit teas, herbal infusions and juices, including one called crimson root, are also on offer.

At the weekends, in addition to thermal experiences, more than 20 local brands and artisans  demonstrate and sell products made from natural ingredients at the Herbarium Expo. 

A pop-up area is dedicated to the Herbarium Lab, for botanical workshops led by the Faculty of Horticulture from the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Bucharest. This includes Ikebana workshops, or traditional Japanese flower arrangement, with exotic flowers, and Oshibana – another Japanese traditional art form that uses pressed flowers to create intricate pictures. Guests can learn traditional Romanian recipes to make elderflower cordial, about Romanian orchids and take part in plant-based cosmetic treatments in the steamrooms.

First person: 

A wild ride of sensory experiences

By Helen Andrews

I visited Therme Bucharest to understand how the concept and operation might translate to the UK market in advance of the opening of Therme Manchester, Therme Group’s first UK facility that is currently under construction and on track to open at the end of 2028.

The Herbarium Festival was in full swing, with queues for scheduled sauna experiences in facilities that looked brand new, which is significant, considering the site celebrated its 10th anniversary in January.

The first experience I attended saw sauna master Joe drench bundles of oak leaves in water and smack them onto the two coal beds to create plumes of steam. He waved the branches around to spread the aroma of the oak, and as the tempo of the Eastern European music picked up, began to make his way to the seated occupants.

We each bowed our heads as he beat us on our shoulders and backs with the leaves, to stimulate our circulation. Joe went back to the coals to throw ice on them and to redrench his leaves before rejoining the audience who were waiting expectantly for their turn to be thwacked in time to the music.

The experience was upbeat, energetic and definitely took my mind off the rising heat level as I watched the leaves fly about the sauna and people submit to Joe for their ritualistic flagellation.

After a cool-down via the cold plunge located in the centre of the thermal area, lunch and a tasty drink from the automated drink station, it was time for the next aufguss experience.

Florian, the aufguss master, led us in a Latvian Pirts Ritual, which saw smoking herbs fanned throughout the sauna in a gentle routine in time to folk music. She placed a ball of ice infused with essential oils on the coals and began to twirl and wave her towel to heat the space as the chorus played, creating citrus-scented waves of warmth. The towel choreography, immersive scents and dimmed light in this sauna had a very relaxing and uplifting effect.

Later on, in the facility’s Hollywood sauna that has steeply inclined seating like an auditorium, Gabriel from Romania used the screen on the wall to display a sparse desert scene as he told a story in a ritual called One More Step.

He gradually brought the temperature up and poured ice on the coals while he described the story of a man who struggled in the wilderness but showed resilience by taking one more step. As the journey became more desperate, Gabriel’s choreography became more athletic and seated participants had to demonstrate their own resilience as the heat built very quickly. The man in the story reached safety and Gabriel imparted that nothing matters other than one’s health and wellbeing in the face of distractions and expectations.

I have to admit this was the hottest experience yet and at one point I was hoping the thirst-making visuals would change to quench my increasing desire to leave the space! They did not, but the audience definitely walked away with more to think about than just where to find water.

At night, because the resort stays open on weekdays between 10:00am and 11:00pm, a concert was held in the same sauna as Gabriel’s One More Step performance. The organisers used a fan to cool the space down as much as possible beforehand and a group of all-women musicians took to the stage. The classical Romanian group, known as Muse Quartet, were joined by two other artists. There were three violinists, a cellist, a harpist and a performer playing the pan flute. The space warmed up as the women played a 15-minute set of Romanian folk music of varying moods, which was very moving. 

The huge variety of options on offer during the festival warrants a full day’s ticket, especially at the weekend when the Herbarium Expo of artisan products and Herbarium Lab for workshops took place. This ticket costs 217 lei (US$48, €43, £37).

With so many thermal experiences on offer, it makes sense to spend longer at the facility to recover from the heat stress before trying new rituals.