MY FAVORITE MASSAGES · THE WORLD UNWOUND
The best hour of any trip is the one lying down.
Reviews of the best massages and spa treatments on earth, city by city. Turkish hammams and Moorish baths, Balinese flower-bath spas and Thai massage, the steam rooms of Marrakech and the Red Sea retreats. We read past the listings so you book the right table.
Worth the airfare
Three treatments that belong to one place.
You can book a massage anywhere now. But the marble heat of a real Turkish hammam, the candlelit Moorish baths of Andalusia, and the petal-strewn flower bath of Bali grew out of these places and feel different everywhere else.
Turkey
The Turkish Hammam
Some of these marble bathhouses have been steaming for five hundred years. You lie on the heated göbektaşı, the navel stone at the centre of the dome, while an attendant works up a cloud of soap from a cloth and scrubs away a layer of you with a coarse kese mitt. Then warm water poured from a copper bowl, an oil massage, and tea in the cooling room. Istanbul does the grandest, but every Turkish coast town has its own.
- 1 Istanbul: Private Turkish Bath, Massage, and Spa in Old City
- 2 Istanbul: Private Turkish Bath, Sauna, and Massage
- 3 Istanbul: Private Turkish Bath, Massage, and Pool in Taksim
Andalusia
The Moorish Baths of Spain
When the Moors ruled southern Spain they built hammams in every city; the best have been brought back to life beneath vaulted ceilings and pierced-star lanterns. You drift between cold, warm and hot pools by candlelight, breathe the rose and orange-blossom steam, and finish with a kneading massage on a warm marble slab. In Granada you do it in the shadow of the Alhambra itself.
- 1 Granada: Hammam Experience with Massage at Baños de Elvira
- 2 Massage Experience in Granada
- 3 Boreal Couple Massage
Bali
The Balinese Flower Bath
Bali turned massage into a whole afternoon. In an open-air pavilion above the rice terraces you get a firm warm-oil Balinese massage, a body scrub of turmeric or coffee, and then the soak everyone photographs: a tub strewn with frangipani and hibiscus petals, a pot of ginger tea beside it. The island is the spa capital of Southeast Asia and the prices still feel impossible.
- 1 Body Massage Experience in Ubud Traditional Spa
- 2 Ubud: Relaxing Spa Balinese Massage Package
- 3 Bali: Ubud Spa Balinese Massage Scrub Flowerbath 2 hour
The one everyone books
If you only book one treatment.
More travellers reach for this one than any other on the site. A safe first booking in a city whose spa scene you are still getting to know.
The classics
The World’s Most Popular Treatments
Marrakech, Istanbul, Granada, Ubud, Hurghada. The hammams, baths and massages travellers reach for first, in the cities they most want to be rubbed down in.
Where to unwind
Pick your kind of treatment.
Turkey for the marble hammam. Morocco for the black-soap scrub. Andalusia for the Moorish baths, Bali for the flower bath, Thailand for the old stretching massage, the Red Sea for resort spas. Each country, with the ritual it does best.
Which kind of treatment
Scrub, massage, or the full ritual.
The kind of treatment matters as much as the city. Three ways to spend your time, depending on how long you have and what your body is asking for.
Turkey & the marble bath
Nobody does the bathhouse like Turkey.
The hammam is a five-hundred-year-old ritual the Turks never stopped practising. You sweat on a heated marble slab under a domed ceiling pricked with stars of light, an attendant scrubs a grey layer of you away with a coarse mitt, then works up a mountain of soap foam and rinses it off with copper bowls of warm water. From the grand old baths of Istanbul to the beach-resort spas of Antalya and Side, it is the cleanest you will ever feel.
See the best massages in Turkey →Spain & Al-Andalus
The Moorish baths came back to life.
When the Moors ruled the south of Spain they built bathhouses in every city, and the best have been lovingly rebuilt beneath horseshoe arches and pierced-star lanterns. In Granada, Malaga, Seville and Cordoba you drift between cold, warm and hot pools by candlelight, breathe rose and orange-blossom steam, and finish face-down on a heated marble slab for a kneading oil massage. It is the most romantic hour in Andalusia.
See the best massages in Spain →The best part
There is a moment you stop holding on.
Every good treatment has it. The shoulders you have carried up to your ears all trip finally drop. The to-do list goes quiet. Warm hands or warm water do the rest, and for an hour you are not a traveller with a schedule, just a body being looked after in a warm, dim room. You step back out onto the street loose, light, and oddly fond of the world.
Browse every treatment →Spa capital of Asia
Southeast Asia perfected the long massage.
A firm warm-oil massage in an open-air Balinese pavilion above the rice fields, the deep pressing and stretching of an old-school Thai massage in Chiang Mai, a herbal-compress treatment in Hanoi. This is where massage is woven into daily life, the skill runs deep, and an hour with a gifted therapist still costs less than a taxi home does anywhere else.
- 1 Body Massage Experience in Ubud Traditional Spa
- 2 Herbal Aroma Journey (Gentle | Aromatic Flow)
- 3 60 Minutes Private Mood Massage in Phuket
By how long you have
How much time can you give it?
Some days you can spare an hour for a quick steam and scrub. Some days you want the full hammam ritual, soap to oil. And some days you clear an afternoon and disappear into a spa entirely. Tell us how long, we will point you at the room.
An hour
A quick steam and scrub.Slip into a hammam between sights: a wash on the hot marble, a foam scrub that leaves your skin new, and you are back out on the street glowing within the hour.
Half a day
The full hammam ritual.The long version: black soap and steam, the kessa-glove scrub, a rhassoul clay wrap, then a slow oil massage and mint tea. The afternoon you give your whole body over to it.
A whole spa day
Disappear into the spa.A jungle spa package: flower bath, body scrub, a long massage and a facial, with fruit and herbal tea between treatments. The day you plan a whole trip around.
The ritual of Morocco
In Morocco, the hammam is a way of life.
Moroccans go to the hammam the way other people go to the gym. The traveller version, in a candlelit riad in Marrakech or a spa in Agadir, runs the full ritual: a slather of olive-black soap, a vigorous kessa-glove scrub that takes years off your skin, a rhassoul clay mask, then a long argan-oil massage and a glass of mint tea. You leave polished, loose and faintly amazed at what just happened.
See all 83 massages in Morocco →By city
Pick a city and book a table.
Marrakech for the black-soap hammam. Istanbul for the marble baths. Granada for the Moorish pools. Ubud for the jungle flower bath. Hurghada for the Red Sea spa. Montego Bay for the massage cabana on the sand.
By country
Every country with a spa habit.
From the Turkish coast to the Moroccan medina, Andalusia to Bali, the beaches of Jamaica to the Red Sea. Browse by the country whose hands you want to be in.
Scrub to soak
A perfect spa day, in order.
Booking the full ritual for the first time? Here is how a great spa afternoon flows, from the first scrub on the hot stone to the last soak you never want to climb out of.
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