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The 9 Best Onsen and Bathhouses Worth Getting Naked in Public For

Nine onsen, hammams, and bathhouses so good they're worth overcoming a lifetime of British modesty for. Real places, honest etiquette tips, and where to stash your dignity.

There is a specific terror to your first communal bathhouse: the slow realisation that everyone is naked, nobody cares, and you are the only person treating it like a crisis. Get past that and it’s one of travel’s great pleasures. These nine are worth shedding the towel and the inhibitions for, ranked by how transcendent the soak is relative to how exposed you’ll feel. I’ve included the etiquette so you don’t become the cautionary tale the regulars tell for years.

A sprawling riverside onsen in Gunma with vast open-air baths beside an actual mountain river, steam curling up through the trees. It’s the platonic image of an onsen — rocks, water, forest, snow in winter. Most baths here are mixed (konyoku), which raises the stakes and the reward.

Tattoos okay? Japan is famously strict, but Takaragawa is more relaxed than most. Still, check ahead — a cover-up patch saves grief.

Yes, it’s touristy, and you wear a swimsuit, so the nudity is mercifully optional. But the milky-blue geothermal water against black lava is genuinely otherworldly, and the silica mud mask does something real to your skin. The pre-bath communal shower, however, is gloriously, non-negotiably naked.

Worth the crowds? Go at opening or late evening. The water makes up for the queue, every time.

A 16th-century hammam designed by the legendary architect Mimar Sinan, with marble domes and shafts of light. You lie on a heated stone slab while an attendant scrubs years off you with a kese mitt, then foams you up like a human cappuccino. Communal, humbling, magnificent.

How naked, exactly? You keep a thin pestemal (cloth) on, but it’s a loose arrangement. The scrub leaves no room for shyness.

One of the oldest bathhouses in Japan, in Matsuyama, said to have inspired the bathhouse in Spirited Away. The wooden building is a national treasure, and soaking here feels like stepping into another century. Strictly single-sex, fully nude, deeply traditional.

First-timer friendly? It’s formal but welcoming. Watch the regulars, wash thoroughly before you enter the water, and you’ll be fine.

A neo-baroque palace of a thermal bath, with grand outdoor pools where locals play chess in the steam. You wear a swimsuit, so it’s the gentle entry point on this list. The indoor thermal rooms get more revealing, and the sheer architectural drama is staggering.

Swimsuit or not? Swimsuit in the main pools. A relaxed, glorious place to start your bathhouse career.

Beppu is a town that steams. Beyond the (look-only) “hells,” the real treat is the sand baths at Takegawara, where you’re buried up to your neck in naturally heated volcanic sand wearing a yukata. The mineral baths nearby are nude and excellent. Bizarre, brilliant, unforgettable.

Buried in sand — comfortable? Surprisingly so, in a heavy-blanket way. Ten minutes is plenty before you cook.

The neighbourhood hammam is a cornerstone of Moroccan life — communal, steamy, and gloriously unfussy. You bring your own bucket and black soap, get scrubbed within an inch of your life, and emerge reborn. Go to a local one over a tourist spa for the authentic, slightly chaotic version.

Local or tourist version? Local for the real thing, but bring a friend and brace for zero privacy. The tourist riads are gentler if that scares you.

Peter Zumthor’s architectural masterpiece — a bathhouse carved from local quartzite, all moody light, stone, and silence. The pools are swimsuit-mandatory and the whole place is more cathedral than spa. You go as much for the architecture as the water. Reverent, expensive, sublime.

More design than soak? Both, in perfect balance. It’s the most beautiful building you’ll ever bathe in.

Proof you don’t need a flight. A proper Russian banya in London with a fierce dry-heat parilla, where an attendant beats you gently with oak and birch leaves (the venik) and you plunge into icy water afterwards. Communal, hardcore, and oddly addictive. Bring a swimsuit and a sense of humour.

The leaf-beating — does it hurt? It stings in the best way and leaves you tingling. Surrender to it; resisting only prolongs the slap.

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