Austria
Salzburg's sauna culture is shaped by its dual identity: a city of music and baroque architecture that also sits at the gateway to the Austrian Alps. The city's own sauna infrastructure centres on hotel wellness facilities — Schloss Mönchstein, Sheraton Grand Salzburg, and Radisson Blu all offer high-quality Finnish saunas and steam rooms accessible to non-guests by day pass. Lehener Freibad provides affordable municipal sauna access. More notably, Salzburg is within an hour of the Salzkammergut lake district and Bad Gastein, making it a natural base for combining city sauna visits with Alpine thermal experiences. Austrian etiquette applies: textile-free in the saunas, swimwear in adjacent pools, Aufguss on a published schedule.
Paracelsus Bad & Kurhaus is the flagship municipal spa with multiple sauna types and a Roman-Irish circuit. Hotel spas at the Sacher Salzburg and Goldener Hirsch lead the luxury tier. The Gastein valley (90 min south) is on a different scale entirely — one of Europe's most potent radon-thermal spring destinations.
Salzburg itself has no thermal springs, but it is the gateway to the Gastein valley (Bad Gastein, Bad Hofgastein). Day trips from Salzburg to Gastein are perfectly feasible by train.
In sauna rooms, yes — the Austrian textile-free convention applies. Swimwear in connecting pools. This is consistent across all Austrian venues regardless of whether they are municipal or private.
