La Perla Talasoterapia

This guide to La Perla Talasoterapia in San Sebastian starts with a grand seaside pavilion sagging into the sand by 1924, decades after it had been the toast of a queen's summer court. It traces La Perla back to 1887, when locals built a garish red wooden bathhouse nicknamed El Perlon on La Concha beach for Maria Cristina's royal circle, and to the 1912 stone-and-glass version architect Ramon Cortazar built to replace it. You'll hear how gambling bans and shifting fashions emptied the halls that had once drawn royalty. Stand on the terrace facing La Concha, the same stretch of Atlantic that drew that royal court into the water.