Bad Pyrmont is a city in the district of Hamelin-Pyrmont with a population of 22,000. It is located on the River Emmer, about 10 km west of the Weser, and a popular spa resort that gained its reputation as a fashionable place for princely vacations in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its large park is among the most spectacular in Germany, with a renowned outdoor palm garden. The baroque castle (1706–10) is part of an impressive complex of fortifications from the 16th century. The castle now houses the Museum of Municipal and Spa History. Unique in Europe is the vapor cave, where therapeutic carbon dioxide vapors emerge from the earth. The town is also the center of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Germany. Bad Pyrmonter mineralwasser, popular throughout northern Germany, is bottled in Bad Pyrmont.
From 1868 onward, the principality was administered by Prussia, but retained its legislative sovereignty. Prussian administration served to reduce administrative costs for the small state and was based on a ten-year contract that was repeatedly renewed. In 1871 it became a constituent state of the new German Empire. At the end of World War I, during the German Revolution the prince abdicated and Waldeck–Pyrmont became a free state within the Weimar Republic. On 30 November 1921, following a local plebiscite, the city and district of Pyrmont were detached and incorporated into the Prussian Province of Hanover, with Waldeck following into the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau in 1929.
Bad Pyrmont is a town with many country clubs and clinics. It has lots of spare time activities for older people, and local people commonly describe Bad Pyrmont as “one big old peoples’ home”.
Bad Pyrmont is well known for its Bathildis Hospital. The clinic is specialised for diseases related to the backbone and nerves, people from all over Germany come to get treatments within the relatively small clinic because of the success of its doctors, and because of the historic bath town infrastructure and comforts, especially for old people.
