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Schwimmenhallen
is the magic picture search engine word.
In Britain, when confronted with an old swimming pool, our first tendency is to knock it down, maybe build a flashy new leisure centre on top of it, or even some yuppie flats. There's a phrase that runs through my head when this happens: they don't know what they've got. Our inclination for burying beautiful, historical and functional buildings that are down on their luck is a disaster that explains why the pump houses of our celebrated spa towns are now pine furniture showrooms or tacky little estate agents. Who would want to fix up an original Edwardian pool when you could build and run a family-orientated leisure centre for much less money? Of course there's only room for one pool in the neighbourhood, guess which one it'll be. It's getting very difficult to find historic pools in the UK. It seems that there are few pools now where you can feel the original slippery tile under your feet, or watch from the balcony, or get changed in a cubicle at the pool's edge. Moseley Road Baths in Birmingham is struggling to survive, Haggerston in Hackney has gone and will probably not return, and the same goes for Marshall Street in London. The pool that hosted my childhood synchronised swimming competitions in Cheltenham, that's disappeared too. There are many of them, all gone. In France and Germany, Switzerland and Austria, Holland, and probably other places too, old does not mean useless. I've swum in turn of the century pools that have been restored for everyone to use - yes, kids too - whilst remaining faithful to the original architecture. In these countries people do know what they've got, and they look after it too. Here are my favourites so far: Hamburg: Bartholomaus Therme This is a Jugendstil pool complex, that being the German equivalent of Art Nouveau. A balcony looks over a swimming hall with a mirrored ceiling. There are jets around the pool's perimeter, which create a giant whirlpool on which people float and drift. In the winter the pool hosts candlelight evenings. There's a second pool too, for people who want to swim laps, and that pool has a couple of diving boards, I think. Hamburg: Kaifu-Bad Hamburg has excellent pools. This complex of indoor and outdoor baths is partially housed in an old hall. There is something here for everybody, the serious trainers, the bobbers, the chuggers and the lazybones too. Everything glitters in the sunlight. Amsterdam: Zuiderbad Built in 1912 it's the oldest pool in Amsterdam and one of the oldest in Holland, I think. One reviewer says: "The place is best described as quirky perhaps. There's nude swimming, and not always during the specified times." Another says: "The real height of Dutch liberalism is the Zuiderbad swimming pool. You can drink there. You can swim drunk. And the height of Dutch Culture was the exhibition there with bird songs broadcast underwater. You can rent the place for parties. On Sunday mornings, hungover, you can swim naked." These photographs were taken there. 
Paris: they're all beautiful The Piscine Pontoise, the older pools, even the pool in Les Halles, all stunning. Look at them here. Vienna: Amalienbad and Jörgerbad Built in 1926 and 1914 and refurbished in the late seventies and eighties, these tiered pools are sumptuous and palatial. |
  
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