What does the water at Herculane taste like?

The ancient name of the place is unsettled. Tabula Peutingeriana gives an Ad Mediam on the Roman road: the map project and Fodorean place it at Herculane, the Princeton encyclopedia, after Tudor, at the Mehadia camp — with a question mark. The cult itself is beyond doubt: around the hot springs grew a bathing cult under Hercules, Aesculapius and Hygieia, with temples, baths, altars and statues.

The formula “Ad Aquas Herculi Sacras” lives on in local tradition — the Izvorul Tămăduirii fountain carries it — and an 1817 Latin plaque joins “Thermas Herculanas Ad Mediam”. The first is modern tradition, the second Habsburg Latin: neither proves an official ancient name.

The Herculane corpus counts 19 inscriptions in IDR III/1, nos. 54–68, plus later finds; RAN currently holds 20 votive inscriptions. Six Hercules statues belong with the springs; in 1737 alone seven were found. Some pieces reached Vienna — the Veteranus altar (CIL III 1560) is now in the Nationalbibliothek — and a ship of antiquities sank off Pest in 1775.

No ancient recipe survives: the stones speak of healing, not milligrams, and the exact taste of Roman water cannot be reconstructed. After the Aurelianic withdrawal, bathing use can no longer be traced in documents down to the Habsburg era: the 2015 dig found Roman basins with an early-medieval trace above — activity, not proof of an unbroken cure.

After the Peace of Passarowitz (1718), the Banat passed under Vienna, and from 1736 General Hamilton rebuilt the baths — razing whatever stood in the way: RAN says the works destroyed Roman basins, conduits and sanctuaries to make room for new construction, and some ruins were blown up with explosives. The recovered antiquities left for Vienna.

On 1 October 1817, Francis I stopped at Herculane; a Latin plaque records his visit, and the resort officially received the name “Băile Herculane”. The 19th century built in stages: a late-baroque plan in the 1700s, a classicist nucleus around Hercules Square, then the Casino ensemble — second half of the century, architect Wilhelm von Doderer — and the Neptune Baths, 1883–1886, architect Ignác Alpár: both eclectic.

On 19 July 1852, Franz Joseph visited the resort; under Tatarczy Károly's enterprise it then took off. The line “the most beautiful resort on the continent” is attributed to the emperor in later tradition — no primary wording has been found. Empress Elisabeth stayed here too, and her diary gives the resort considerable attention.

The Herculane paradox: the modern resort rose by partly erasing the ancient thermae — and today specialists and volunteers are trying to save precisely the imperial baths that replaced them.

The Romans left votive stones. In 1773, Heinrich Johann Nepomuk Crantz published the chemical analyses of the waters in Vienna — Analyses Thermarum Herculanarum Daciae Traiani. The 20th century brought systematic hydrogeology, and the reference synthesis is Povară–Simion–Marin 2008, with monitoring data compiled from 1984–1995.

At reservoir scale the waters are chloride-rich and sodium-dominated; southwards, mineralisation and hydrogen sulphide generally increase — but each spring has its own mix of deep thermal water and cold karst water. Hercules is strongly diluted, with H2S absent; the southern sources are Na–Ca–Cl type, with bromides, iodides and sulphides.

From K–Na and K–Mg ratios, the Giggenbach model estimates a deep equilibrium temperature of 170–190 °C: a geochemical estimate, not a thermometer reading. And the system is sensitive: test pumping at Neptun IV dried the Diana group springs to disappearance. Chemical composition is not medical advice — cures use the developed sources, under guidance.

The Neptune Baths (1883–1886, Alpár) are out of service and severely degraded, with three pre-collapse sectors — but not abandoned: HerculaneProject has carried out emergency interventions in stages (2019, 2020–2022 maintenance, 2022 scaffolding) and is running a reactivation project, with the legal situation still unresolved.

Under Hotel Roman, completed in 1975, survive 3 cabins and 4 basins of the old Roman Bath, with a Hercules relief carved into the rock. And Herculane is today the only Romanian destination in the Roman Thermal Spas of Europe network (9 destinations) and an active EHTTA member since 2023.