Inseparable from the inns are the bathing-places; in most cases the baths formed part of the inn premises. At Abano, near Padua, the chief bathing resort of Italy, were private rooms with a "guarderobbe"[101] adjoining, through which latter a stream of the water could be turned on. Baden in Switzerland was exceptional in having baths under public control, for poor as well as for rich, besides those in private hands. The inn Montaigne stayed at had eleven kitchens, three hundred persons were catered for each day, one hundred and seventy-seven beds made, and every one could reach his room without passing through any one else's. His party engaged four rooms, containing no more than nine beds; two of the rooms had stoves; and a private bath adjoined. Swiss Baden possessed sixty baths, German Baden three hundred. Spa was much visited, but most of the watering-places have been practically forgotten, so far as the water is concerned, Pougues-les-Eaux, the chief centre in France, for instance, and Aachen, where there existed forty baths outside the town, although the chief ones were within. [Illustration: GERMAN BATHING-PLACES] The object of the visitors was as much medicinal nominally and as little so really, as might be expected. "Many come thither with no disease but that of love: and many times find remedy."[102] The conditions seem somewhat free and easy: in Rome it was customary to go accompanied by a lady friend in spite of the masseurs being male; of Plombières Montaigne says that it was reckoned indecent for men to bathe naked or for women to wear less than a chemise; from which it may be gathered what ordinary conditions were. The bathing there was "mixed," as at the German baths where these restrictions were not in force and where, consequently, the sight of scores of young couples and parties, some family parties, some not, in a state of nature, or very nearly so, amusing themselves with games played at floating tables, or without any help at all, excited the shame, the interest, and the participation of foreigners from all quarters. Ladies, however, who needed baths and preferred decency, were provided for at Swiss Baden, where private baths were for hire, well lighted by glazed windows, painted, panelled, and clean, with conveniences for reading. The building of Turkish baths seemed to Della Valle to afford more likelihood of a chill than the Italian; but it was, he says, all one could expect for the price, which was much lower. How much lower is not clear, but evidently considerably so, the result of a difference of habit; in Italy the poor did not bathe, in Turkey the rich bathed at home.