For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser. Winter has come and I'm hunkered down over the heater wishing it were June again and I was splashing about in the warm pools of the Aire Banos Arabes, a subterranean bathhouse built on the site of an ancient hammam in the historic Santa Cruz district of Seville.
I love a good hammam and you can't keep me away if there's one in a city where I'm travelling. I've been scrubbed with black soap in Marrakech and immersed in a high-tech hydrotherapy bath in France. I've swum under an ancient dome in Budapest, soaked in onsen in Japan and tapped myself with birch sticks in a sauna in Stockholm.
While traditions differ, the principal of steam, scrub, bathe and massage is common to most bathhouses. But now that bathing has become fashionable, there are a growing number of bathhouses that are so ritzy you might want to think about the label on your swimsuit. The Aire Banos Arabes is one of them.
It can be found within a network of narrow lanes in Seville's old Jewish quarter. The 16th century mansion which houses the baths is built on an ancient Roman bathhouse, so once a guest has checked in, been given a locker key, and descended into the candlelit crypt of the building, they're stepping into ancient history.
The handmade brick walls, the low vaulted ceilings and the Moroccan lamps casting shadows make it lushly atmospheric. I'd even say sexy. That's obviously what the other bathers thought, anyway, as it was more like a nightclub than a bath, the three thermal pools and one hydrotherapy pool all full of embracing couples with beautiful bodies, wearing expensive bathing suits and tans.
