Bath has four twinned towns:^[84]

• Aix-en-Provence, France
• Alkmaar, Netherlands
• Braunschweig, Germany
• Kaposvár, Hungary
• Beppu, Ōita Prefecture, Japan

Bath also has a partnership agreement with Beppu, Japan and is a sister city to Manly, New South Wales, Australia.^[84]

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Transport

Bath is approximately 15 miles (24 km) south-east of the larger city and port of Bristol, to which it is linked by the A4 road, and is a similar distance south of the M4 motorway. In an attempt to reduce the level of car use Park and Ride schemes have been introduced, with sites at Odd Down, Lansdown and Newbridge, with a Saturdays-only site at the University of Bath. In addition a Bus Gate scheme in Northgate aims to reduce private car use in the city centre.^[85] National Express operates coach services from Bath to a number of cities. Internally, Bath has a network of bus routes run by First Group, with services to surrounding towns and cities. There is one other company running open top double-decker bus tours around the city.

The city is connected to Bristol and the sea by the River Avon, navigable via locks by small boats. The river was connected to the River Thames and London by the Kennet and Avon Canal in 1810 via Bath Locks; this waterway – closed for many years, but restored in the last years of the 20th century – is now popular with narrow boat users.^[86] Bath is on National Cycle Route 4, with one of Britain's first cycleways, the Bristol & Bath Railway Path, to the west, and an eastern route toward London on the canal towpath. Although Bath does not have an airport, the city is about 18 miles (29 km) from Bristol International Airport.

Bath is served by the Bath Spa railway station (designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel), which has regular connections to London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads, Cardiff Central, Swansea, Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance (see Great Western Main Line), and also Westbury, Warminster, Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth and Brighton (see Wessex Main Line). Services are provided by First Great Western. There is a suburban station on the main line, Oldfield Park, which has a limited commuter service to Bristol as well as other destinations. Green Park station was once operated by the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, whose line (always steam driven) climbed over the Mendips and served many towns and villages on its 71-mile (114 km) run to Bournemouth; this example of an English rural line was closed by Beeching in March 1966, with few remaining signs of its existence, but its Bath station building survives and now houses a number of shops.

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Architecture

City of Bath*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, ii, iv
Reference	428
Region†	Europe and North America
Inscription history
Inscription	1987  (11th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. † Region as classified by UNESCO.

There are many Roman archaeological sites throughout the central area of the city, but most of them are around 15 feet (4.6 m) below the present city street level. Around the hot springs, Roman foundations, pillar bases, and baths can still be seen, however all the stonework above the level of the baths is from more recent periods.^[87]

Bath Abbey was a Norman church built on earlier foundations, although the present building dates from the early 16th century and shows a late Perpendicular style with flying buttresses and crocketed pinnacles decorating a crenellated and pierced parapet.^[88] The choir and transepts have a fan vault by Robert and William Vertue.^[89] The nave was given a matching vault in the 19th century.^[90] The building is lit by 52 windows.^[91]

Most buildings in Bath are made from the local, golden-coloured Bath Stone, and many date from the 18th and 19th century. The dominant style of architecture in Bath is Georgian;^[92] this evolved from the Palladian revival style which became popular in the early 18th century. Many of the prominent architects of the day were employed in the development of the city. The original purpose of much of Bath's architecture is concealed by the honey-coloured classical façades; in an era before the advent of the luxury hotel, these apparently elegant residences were frequently purpose-built lodging houses, where visitors could hire a room, a floor, or (according to their means) an entire house for the duration of their visit, and be waited on by the house's communal servants.^[93]

"The Circus" consists of three long, curved terraces designed by the elder John Wood to form a circular space or theatre intended for civic functions and games. The games give a clue to the design, the inspiration behind which was the Colosseum in Rome.^[94] Like the Colosseum, the three façades have a different order of architecture on each floor: Doric on the ground level, then Ionic on the piano nobile and finishing with Corinthian on the upper floor, the style of the building thus becoming progressively more ornate as it rises.^[94] Wood never lived to see his unique example of town planning completed, as he died five days after personally laying the foundation stone on May 18, 1754.^[94]

Fan vaulting over the nave at Bath Abbey, Bath, England. Made from local Bath stone, this is a Victorian restoration (made in the 1860s) of the original roof from 1608

The best known of Bath's terraces is the Royal Crescent, built between 1767 and 1774 and designed by the younger John Wood.^[95] But all is not what it seems; while Wood designed the great curved façade of what appears to be about 30 houses with Ionic columns on a rusticated ground floor, that was the extent of his input. Each purchaser bought a certain length of the façade, and then employed their own architect to build a house to their own specifications behind it; hence what appears to be two houses is sometimes one. This system of town planning is betrayed at the rear of the crescent: while the front is completely uniform and symmetrical, the rear is a mixture of differing roof heights, juxtapositions and fenestration.^[96] This "Queen Anne fronts and Mary-Anne backs" architecture occurs repeatedly in Bath.^[97]

Around 1770 the neoclassical architect Robert Adam designed Pulteney Bridge, using as the prototype for the three-arched bridge spanning the Avon an original, but unused, design by Palladio for the Rialto Bridge in Venice.^[98] Thus, Pulteney Bridge became not just a means of crossing the river, but also a shopping arcade. Along with the Rialto Bridge, is one of the very few surviving bridges in Europe to serve this dual purpose.^[98] It has been substantially altered since it was built. The bridge was named after Frances and William Pulteney, the owners of the Bathwick estate for which the bridge provided a link to the rest of Bath.^[98]

The heart of the Georgian city was the Pump Room, which, together with its associated Lower Assembly Rooms, was designed by Thomas Baldwin, a local builder who was responsible for many other buildings in the city, including the terraces in Argyle Street.^[99] Baldwin rose rapidly, becoming a leader in Bath's architectural history. In 1776 he was made the chief City Surveyor, and in 1780 became Bath City Architect.^[99] Great Pulteney Street, where he eventually lived, is another of his works: this wide boulevard, constructed circa 1789 and over 1,000 feet (305 m) long and 100 feet (30 m) wide, is lined on both sides by Georgian terraces.

In the 1960s and early 1970s some parts of Bath were unsympathetically redeveloped, resulting in the loss of some 18th- and 19th-century buildings. This process was largely halted by a popular campaign which drew strength from the publication of Adam Fergusson's The Sack of Bath.^[100]

A panoramic view of the Royal Crescent

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Education

Bath has two universities. The University of Bath was established in 1966 and has grown to become a leading university in the United Kingdom.^[101] The university is known, academically, for the physical sciences, mathematics, architecture, management and technology.^[102]

Bath Spa University was first granted degree-awarding powers in 1992 as a university college (Bath Spa University College), before being granted university status in August 2005.^[103] It has schools in the following subject areas: Art and Design, Education, English and Creative Studies, Historical and Cultural Studies, Music and the Performing Arts, and Social Sciences.^[103] It also awards degrees through colleges such as Weston College in nearby Weston-super-Mare.

The city contains one further education college, City of Bath College, and several sixth forms as part of both state, private, and public schools. In England, on average in 2006, 45.8% of pupils gained 5 grades A*-C including English and Maths; for Bath and North East Somerset pupils taking GCSE at 16 it is 52.0%.^[104] Special needs education is provided by Three Ways School.

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Media

Bath has two main local newspapers, the Bath Chronicle and the Bath Times. The Bath Chronicle, published since 1760, was a daily newspaper until mid-September 2007 when it became a weekly.^[106] The Bath Times is a free weekly newspaper, largely based around advertising. Both newspapers are owned by Northcliffe Media.

The BBC's Where I Live website for Somerset has featured coverage of news and events within Bath since 2003.^[107]

For television, Bath is served by the BBC West studios based in Bristol, and by ITV West (formerly HTV) with studios similarly in Bristol.

Radio stations broadcasting to the city include Bath's GWR FM and the more locally-focused Bath FM, as well as The University of Bath's 1449AM URB, a student-focused radio on campus and also available online,^[108] and Classic Gold 1260 a networked commercial radio station with local programmes.

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See also

• List of notable Bathonians
• List of spa towns in the United Kingdom

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References

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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Bath

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Bath.

• Official tourist information
• Virtual tour of Bath
• Bath at the Open Directory Project
• Bath travel guide from Wikitravel

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