The renowned Bath Literary Festival, the Bath Music Festival and its supporting Fringe Festival, which take place in the Spring and early summer, are annual highlights in the city's packed Arts calender. The City's beautiful Theatre Royal, which dates from 1805, is a first choice venue for shake-down runs of plays and musicals prior to a London West End Opening and for tours by Opera, and Ballet companies. Theatre buffs can join a 'Meet the acters' backstage tour arranged twice a week by the management.
The Palladian beauty of Bath owes its stately architectural vistas and gracious Regency buildings to the 18th century architects John Wood the Elder and Younger, and to the neo-classicist Scot, Robert Adam, designer of the beautiful Pulteney Bridge on the smooth flowing River Avon which runs through the City.
The Royal Crescent, built by John Wood the Younger between 1767 and 1774 is hailed as his masterpiece and is, I think, the most beautiful street in England. No.1 is now a museum of the Bath Preservation Trust, decorated and fuurnished in the grand manner of the Regency epoque and well worth a visit. The architect's father, John Wood the Elder, designed the equally beautiful Circus, lined by a circle of 33 elegant town houses, fitting residences for such as the 18th century painter Thomas Gainsborough.
All owed their patronage to the eccentric Richard "beau" Nash, who as the City's ebullient Master of Ceremonies was responsible for the transformation of Bath from a stolidly rich medieval wool merchants' market town into a Georgian playground for the high-living, high gambling, society of the period. Nash himself, an inveterate gambler, died penniless, his mistress retiring to live in a hollow tree!
My Lady and I arrived in Bath from our Salisbury stay early in the afternoon, and having checked into our hotel, went directly to the magnificent Roman Baths. The hot springs over which the Baths were built become famous for their healing properties some 800 years before Julius Caesar first set foot on British soil in 55.BC prior to his veni, vidi, vici campaign of subjugation. They were dedicated to the Celtic water deity Sulis, identified by the occupying Roman conquerers with their own Goddess Minerva, to whom they built a temple on the site. The Baths are the finest remains of a Roman religious spa anywhere in the world though little else remains of the prosperous Roman Spa town of Aquae Sulis that grew up around the waters in the 1st and 2nd century AD.
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