THE BAUERNBAD, THE THERMAL PEASANT’S BATH 
In the old Tyrol and its southern part, represented by the today’s Alto Adige (South Tyrol) there has always been a long tradition of thermal baths. Peasants went to Bauernbad (the thermal peasant’s bath) for therapeutic reasons and for a time of relax and vacation. Antecedent of modern forms of vacation and therapy tourism, the peasant thermal bad has been for long time the representation of local tourism, delimited but not only reserved to the upper class. Only at the end of the eight hundred, thanks to the acknowledged benefi ts of water and air, these austere forms of tourism give way to the therapy tourism that bring the fi rst tourists from the big towns, start the building of hotels and the begin of the “embellishment associations”, a real start of the mountain tourism.