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Though only twelve miles from Bristol, BATH has a very different
feel from its neighbour - more harmonious, compact, leisurely and
complacent. The city's elegant crescents and Georgian buildings are
studded with plaques naming Bath's eminent inhabitants from its heyday
as a spa resort; it was here that Jane Austen wrote Persuasion and
Northanger Abbey , and where Gainsborough established himself as a
portraitist and landscape painter. Nowadays Bath ranks as one of
Britain's top ten tourist cities, yet the place has never lost the
exclusive air those names evoke.
Bath owes its name and fame to its hot springs - the only ones in the
country - which made it a place of reverence for the local Celtic
population, though it had to wait for Roman technology to create a fully
fledged bathing establishment. The baths fell into decline with the
departure of the Romans, but the town later regained its importance
under the Saxons, its abbey seeing the coronation of the first king of
all England , Edgar, in 973. A new bathing complex was built in the
sixteenth century, popularized by the visit of Elizabeth I in 1574, and
the city reached its fashionable zenith in the eighteenth century, when
Beau Nash ruled the town's social scene. It was at this time that Bath
acquired its ranks of Palladian mansions and town houses, all built in
the local Bath stone , which is now enshrined in building regulations as
an obligatory element in any new constructions in the city. Three miles
southeast of the centre, near the university campus, Claverton holds a
museum of Americana amid gorgeous rolling countryside.
The swathes of parkland between Bath's Regency developments lend the
city a spacious feel, but the sheer weight of traffic pouring through
the central streets can be a major turn-off. Drivers are advised to use
one of the Park-and-Ride car parks around the periphery - and if you're
coming from Bristol, note that you can cycle all the way along a cycle-path
that follows the route of a disused railway line and the course of the
Avon.
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