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Bath is a city in Somerset in the southwest of England,
at the bottom of the Avon Valley, and near the southern edge of the Cotswolds, a range of
limestone hills designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The city was founded around naturally-occurring hot springs where the Romans
built baths and a temple, giving it the name Aquae Sulis. The city became a World
Heritage Site in 1987, and is a major centre for tourism. Archaeological evidence shows
that the site of the Roman Bath's main spring was treated as a shrine by the Celts, and was
dedicated to the goddess Sulis, whom the Romans identified with Minerva; however, the name
Sulis continued to be used after the Roman invasion, leading to the town's Roman name of
Aquae Sulis (literally, "the waters of Sulis"). Messages to her scratched onto metal, known
as curse tablets, have been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists.
These tablets usually laid curses on people by whom
the writer felt they had been wronged. The temple was constructed in 60-70 AD and the
bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years.
Hot water at a temperature of 46 °C (114.8 °F) rises here at the rate of 1.2 million litres
every day, from a geological fault.
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