Top of the World
The history of the Scrajo Thermal Baths in Vico Equense began in 1833 when Dr. Scala bought the land on which the presence of a spring of water that poured abundantly into the sea had been known for some time. Intrigued by the unusual milky and opalescent colour of this liquid, a phenomenon that occurred when the water touched the point where the spring flowed, by the characteristic smell of rotten eggs and by the continuous requests of the inhabitants to be able to draw water from its source to use it as a medicine, Dr. Scala decided to investigate the matter by analysing the spring water, which turned out to be thermal. Curiously enough, the Scala family, descendants of the far-sighted doctor who had discovered the therapeutic value of the thermal spring, is still the owner of the Scrajo baths today, almost two hundred years after that first intuition. The water of Scrajo in the Sorrento peninsula was considered by the locals even miraculous for its qualities and in 1897 was in fact awarded for therapeutic excellence by the Italian Society of Internal Medicine.
