As Burgas
Three hot springs at more than 60°C in the middle of Ourense's old town, where the Roman city began
Visit details
Overview
As Burgas is a group of three hot springs in the middle of the old town of Ourense, where water drawn from an aquifer more than a kilometre down reaches the surface at over 60°C. The Roman settlement of Auria grew up around these springs, so this is literally where the city started, and Ourense has been calling itself the city of As Burgas ever since.
The heat is geological rather than volcanic. Rain soaks into the fractured granite that Ourense sits on, sinks for kilometres, warms up down there, and comes back up carrying the minerals it picked up on the way. The official figure for the Burga de Arriba, the spring at the top of the site, is 64.2°C with a pH of 7.7, and the water is classed as hyperthermal, medium mineralisation, fluoridated, with bicarbonate and sodium as the dominant ions. Older descriptions give the group a range of 64 to 68°C and a combined flow of around 300 litres a minute.
Nothing here is ticketed or fenced. The springs sit on an open terrace of granite and lawn on three levels, in the middle of a working city, and the whole site is free to walk through at any hour. Most people give it twenty minutes: put a hand under a spout, read the Roman altars, walk down to the neoclassical fountain in the gardens, and carry on.
One thing to know before you plan around it: the open-air thermal pool built into the site, the single reason many visitors come, is currently shut. Ourense city tourism lists both the pool and the As Burgas interpretation centre as temporarily closed, and its thermal status bulletin of 29 July 2026 confirms the pool among the closed facilities.
That leaves the springs themselves, the archaeological boulevard behind them, and the reason both exist. It is still worth the walk, and it is the one stop in Ourense that explains everything else about the place.
The site was declared a conjunto histórico-artístico in 1975 and, after a long protection process, a Bien de Interés Cultural with the category of Sitio Histórico in 2007. The water itself has its own legal status: a Xunta de Galicia resolution of 12 February 2007 declares it thermal and mineral-medicinal. That double designation is why the current layout, all granite paving and open sightlines, was rebuilt the way it was rather than roofed over.
History
The sanctuary of Revve Anabaraego
Excavations at As Burgas have turned up a pool-sanctuary from the first century AD along with a set of votive altars dedicated to Revve Anabaraego, a pre-Roman deity understood to live in the springs and to be responsible for their healing power. The names cut into those altars come from across the Roman west, which tells you people travelled here on purpose. Ourense city tourism describes As Burgas as a pilgrimage site in antiquity and one of the most important indigenous sanctuaries on the Iberian Peninsula.
The sanctuary ran from the middle of the first century AD to the middle of the second, after which it was rebuilt as a room with a hypocaust and stayed in use until the third century. The first Roman altar from the site was found in the nineteenth century and was dedicated to the nymphs of the waters; the twentieth-century digs are what produced the Revve Anabaraego material and pushed the cult back before the Romans arrived. That first altar carries the name Calpurnia Abana Aeboso, long treated locally as the earliest named inhabitant of the city.
Alongside the sanctuary the Romans built a balnea, the ordinary neighbourhood bath house of the empire, and the two ran side by side for a long stretch. Both sets of foundations survive and both are visible on site today, which is unusual: worship and washing, twenty metres apart, still in the same field of view.
Pilgrims, bakers and tanners
Medieval Europe largely lost the habit of thermal bathing, but As Burgas never stopped being used. The Catholic Church took the springs under its protection, partly as a hygiene measure against plague and partly because they were a relief for pilgrims walking the Way of Saint James through the city. The sacred character the Romans gave the water was not dropped so much as reassigned, this time to the Santo Cristo in the cathedral.
The two fountains standing today are what that long working life eventually settled into. The Burga de Arriba, at the upper end beside the pool, is the older of the pair and the plainer, seventeenth-century and built to be used rather than admired. The Burga de Abaixo, down in the gardens, is a nineteenth-century neoclassical piece attributed to the master mason Trillo, with two side spouts, a carved basin with a floret at the centre and the city arms on top.
The Burga de Abaixo was deliberately designed as a nymphaeum, a dwelling for nymphs, which means the nineteenth-century city was already consciously quoting a Roman past it had only half excavated. It stands in what were the first public gardens Ourense ever laid out. The iron railing around it is a later addition, put up for the visit of King Alfonso XII in 1881. A third spring, the Burga do Medio, sits against the wall between the two and is the modern element of the set, tied to the thermal complex and the interpretation centre that opened in 2010.
The accident that changed the law
Drilling for a new spa in early 2005 went ahead without authorisation and punctured one of the wells feeding As Burgas. Roughly 40 per cent of the flow was lost and one of the main spouts ran dry, something recorded only once before, after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. The shock is part of what pushed the Xunta to open the protection file that ended in the 2007 Sitio Histórico declaration, and the site as you see it now, terraces, boulevard and all, is the product of the works that followed.
Visiting
Come at As Burgas from the top and the site reads as one thing rather than three. The upper terrace holds the Burga de Arriba and the archaeological remains, and it connects straight into the interpretation centre; the middle level is the esplanade with the thermal pool and the Burga do Medio against the wall; the lower level is the garden with the Burga de Abaixo. The address is Rúa das Burgas, in the 32005 postcode, and there is no gate, ticket desk or opening time to work around.
Look for the Fervedoiro beside the lower fountain, a square tank where the water arrives visibly bubbling and appears to be boiling. Four replica votive altars stand inside the pool enclosure, and the one facing the fountain is the nymph dedication bearing Calpurnia Abana; her inscription is reproduced again on a mural in the pool, next to two 1989 sculptures, La casa de la nube by Borrajo and Calpurnia Abana by Acisclo.
The pool is worth understanding even shut, because it is the thing everyone is waiting on. It holds almost 200 square metres of open-air thermal water in the middle of the historic centre, cooled from spring temperature to 38 to 40°C so it works in any season, and when open it is free to use, with changing rooms, lockers, a wet sauna and a sun terrace.
The published bathing rules are worth knowing in advance for whenever it reopens. Bathers are asked to leave the water half an hour before closing time. The site also flags contraindications for the water: high blood pressure, low blood pressure, cardiac conditions and pregnancy, with a note to check with a doctor first. The water in the pool is described as medium mineralisation, alkaline and lithinic, which is the combination the city credits for the effect on skin and muscle.
Behind the interpretation centre runs the As Burgas pedestrian boulevard, a green strip linking Rúa da Burga and Rúa do Baño that works as an open-air museum. Three modern wells, a medieval tomb, the Roman wall structures of the balnea and the first-century pool-sanctuary of Revve Anabaraego are all laid out along it, and the sanctuary is described as the only one of its kind on the Peninsula. This part stays walkable whatever else is shut, and it is the best half hour on the site right now.
The Centro de Interpretación de As Burgas is at Rúa do Vilar 8, entered from the street or from the boulevard behind, with five exhibition rooms plus a reading room and an audiovisual room covering the geology, the altars and the Roman cameo, the balnea and its hypocaust, and the medieval afterlife of the springs. It is also listed as temporarily closed; the contact number given for it is 988 250 103.
If you came to Ourense to get in the water, the free river-bank pools are the fallback. The free riverside spaces at Outariz, A Chavasqueira, Muíno da Veiga and Burga de Canedo are open daily from 10:00 to 20:00, and the paid Termas de A Chavasqueira and Termas de Outariz run full hours. Levels in the Miño and the weather can close any of them at short notice.
Tips
- Treat the springs and the archaeological boulevard as the visit, and anything else as a bonus. Both the thermal pool and the interpretation centre were listed as temporarily closed when this page was checked, and the pool has been on that list for a long time.
- Check the city’s thermal status bulletin the morning you go. It carries a dated update covering every thermal facility in Ourense, including which of the free river pools are open and at what hours.
- Do not put your hand straight under a spout. This is water at over 60°C at source, not a warm tap. The Fervedoiro tank shows you what that actually looks like.
- Go at first light or after dark. Steam off the basins is far more visible against cold air, and the site is lit and unfenced, so there is no timetable to beat.
Cold mornings between November and March give the strongest effect, and the springs are at their most photogenic then. There is no admission and no gate on the fountains, so an early or late visit costs nothing and clears the daytime crowd from the terraces.
- Pack a swimsuit and a towel anyway if the bulletin shows the free river spaces open. They run 10:00 to 20:00 and there is nowhere on site to rent kit.
- Drive to the river pools and you will need the Outariz and Reza car park on the far bank. The N-120 parking at Muíño da Veiga is cut off, which affects Burga de Canedo and the Termas de Outariz too.
- Read the four replica altars before you read the panels. They are the whole argument of the site in one object: an indigenous god, a Roman spelling, and a woman’s name from the first century.
- Ring the municipal tourist office on 988 366 064 for anything time-sensitive. It moved to the cathedral steps in April 2025 and opens Monday to Friday 09:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 20:00, weekends and holidays 11:00 to 14:00.
- Skip As Burgas if you only have an hour in Ourense and it is raining hard. There is no shelter on the terraces while the centre is shut.
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