Hot springs in Greece constitute important sites of different significance in the course of time. The subject of this research is to approach and to identify the hot springs in the prefecture of Fthiotida throw a theoretical and empirical study. The mineral springs mentioned in this study can be found in the regions of Ypati, Thermopyles, Platystomo, Kallidromo, Archani and Kamena Vourla.
The thermal mineral springs of Greece are not well known, especially among the young people. The ones familiar with the hot springs are for the most part locals or people coming from abroad. In our country these thermal springs are not taking in consideration and as result they are neglected and abandoned. Nowadays the turn to western lifestyle model promotes different trends from the past regarding the management of the hot springs as “spas”.
Every time there is an attempt to explode this wealth, there is also its limitation and entrapment. It natural “self-sown” aspect is often replaced with reckless, careless and superficial tendency for recovery in conjunction with the ease of using modern materials. The thermal establishments we have visited in several natural spas recall the echo of bygone, flourishing era that today, unfortunately, is no more than a static picture of the past? However in some cases time has embodied the landscape. Human interventions constantly change the identity of each source, each colors and elements, each temperature, size and effusion and finally its expression. Most of the bathers prefer hot springs in their natural environment, with mild eventual intervention if necessary, in order to satisfy aesthetical and functional needs. Today many hot springs are hard to be located as they have come into private ownership and they have been isolated and closed in cisterns. Even the locals practically ignore the actual site of these hot springs, their privatization has violently excluded the locals. Once again the hot springs are lost in time, but now the circumstances do not favour their reappearance.
Hot springs constitute a lost and a hidden world, a sort of an isolated word, here the times run differently, it has it own rhythm, a rhythm that does not comply with the modern demands, but with the different needs of everyone of us. An interruption and a new beginning take place, both in time and in space, an heterotopia.
The hot springs can be considered as travel stops, as a passage where one can rest, refresh and then continue to its final destination. But when a sore man starts the journey to the hot springs, then they become the final destination and the journey is just the beginning of the initiation.