Abano Terme Culture

The town's institution is the ciclo di cure: a prescribed course, usually around twelve days, of mud application, thermal bathing and inhalation, medically supervised and in many cases reimbursed by the Italian health service. This shapes everything -- the length of stays, the age of the visitors, the fact that hotels have doctors.

Fangoterapia is the specific local product. Clay is matured for months in flowing thermal water until particular thermophilic micro-organisms and algae colonise it, and the result -- fango DOC -- is a regulated preparation, not simply hot mud.

The visitor culture is largely Italian, German and Austrian, and largely returning: many guests have come to the same hotel annually for decades.

The Euganean Hills supply the town's other cultural register -- the Benedictine abbey at Praglia, the wine of the Colli Euganei DOC on volcanic soil, and Arquà Petrarca, the hill village where Petrarch died in 1374 and whose house is preserved.

The food is Paduan: freshwater fish, bigoli, goose and duck, and the hills' own wines.