POOLS Despite the glamorous galas and gorgeous weddings we never lose sight of what first drew people to the Blue Baths back in 1933. Swimming! With the heart racing proximity of the opposite sex, adding to the excitement then, mixed bathing has of course now become the norm!   The Blue Baths Pools have fresh water (not mineral) and are geothermally heated. The original Juvenile Pool is generally around 30°c & the 2 hot soak pools between 37°c & 42°c. The pools are open from 10am in the morning during summer and midday during the winter months. Closing times vary at different times of year and if the venue is being used for a private event the pools may close early. We encourage you to phone ahead to check closing times if you are planning a special visit.   The Blue Baths Pools are unsupervised and have no lifeguard service. Preschool children will not be permitted to swim in the pools without an accompanying swimming adult. Children under 14 years will not be admitted to the pool area without a supervising adult. Learn to swim classes are held. Please contact us for schedules.   Admission charges: Child $6.00 pp (5-13 yrs) Adult: $11.00 pp (14 yrs & over)  Adult group rate: $9.00pp (10 pax or more)  Family: $30.00 (2 adults & up to 3 children)  Preschoolers are free, but must be accompanied by a swimming adult (2:1 ratio please)  Child concession cards are available for learn to swim classes - please contact us.

The Blue Baths heritage is one of style and romance, and weddings weddings weddings! Behind the spectacular Spanish Mission facade beats the passionate heart of Historic Venues, committed to making the day of your dreams a reality.   Our talented wedding coordinators never forget that each celebration is a unique occasion. Not only is there a gorgeous selection of linens and table arrangements for your choosing, there’s variety of locations within the grand old building. For those planning a large gala affair, the glamorous expanse of the Lido lounge, is perfect. For an intimate celebration, think the lovely Art Deco ambience of the upstairs Tearoom with its potted palms and French doors opening to glorious garden views. Or how about the romance of the poolside wedding ? Perhaps the sparkling blue waters and cascading fountain will be the setting for your "I do’s"?   The Blue Baths are set within the tranquil expanse of the well loved Government Gardens, which provide sensational settings for garden weddings. Photographic backdrops abound, especially in the Klamath Falls Rose Garden at its fragrant best during the summer months.   Like the Government Gardens, The Blue Baths own a nostalgic place in the city’s heart, with each generation creating its own romantic memories linked to this. The fabulous Fine Food Services team of the Blue Baths can also provide out-catering for your ceremony and reception at other venues you may choose including The Redwoods at Whakarewarewa Forest, Te Runanga TeaHouse in Government Gardens or in a Marquee in a setting of your choice. Please contact us to receive a wedding info pack.     To view images of recent events please visit: http://web.mac.com/gotyaphoto/BlueBaths/Welcome.html

The tranquil beauty of The Government Gardens, a large park located on Hinemaru Street in Rotorua‚ a central city area is a favourite location for wedding ceremonies and receptions and intimate candlelight dinners. From the sprightly Victorian panache of the iron lace festooned Band Rotunda to the gracious old world style of the Te Runanga Tearooms, and the art deco elegance of the Blue Baths, there are certainly many different options.Photographic backdrops abound, especially in the Klamath Falls Rose Garden at its fragrant best during the summer months. The stunning peace and beauty of The Redwoods at Whakarewarewa Forest offers a calm oasis, a world removed, yet only a few minutes from Rotorua CBD. This unique location ensures a magical backdrop for both wedding ceremonies and receptions. A permanent sail canopy ensures a spectacular all weather ceremony venue for up to 300 guests, or a banquet setting for 200. Four other areas within the forest, (without all-weather cover) each have their own fabulous features from spectacular stonewalls and lovely lawned areas to intimate bush clad settings. For more information on all of these venues and settings please contact the Historic Venues team

Located in Rotorua’s dress circle and described as one of New Zealand’s most loved buildings, the Blue Baths have been faithfully restored to their unique 1930’s ambience. Now operating as a private function facility it’s a fabulous venue for a wide range of events, including the following: - Exhibitions, Product Launches & Trade Shows - Private & Public Celebrations - Glamourous Gala & Themed Dinners - Concerts, Cabarets and Cocktail Parties   Daytime Conferencing – exclusive use of the entire complex for up to 5 consecutive days. Complete professional catering is provided within the Blue Baths for up to 650 guests cocktail style or 350 pax banquet. Larger groups, up to 1000 persons, can enjoy a cocktail party by linking the neighbouring Rotorua Museum of Art and History to the Blue Baths via a covered walkway. For larger groups again, please refer to our Government Garden Parties section.   Fine Food Services, our out-catering team, provides catering to conference groups at the nearby Rotorua Convention Centre and other local landmark venues.   Events are tailored to suit individual groups, with the dedicated Blue Baths team able to coordinate everything from catering & theming, to entertainment and audiovisual requirements.   In addition The Blue Baths has its own theatre company offering unique entertainment based on characters and events from the buildings colourful past. The troupe features talented musicians and actors offering a cornucopia of entertainment options. Murder mysteries! Theatresports! How about a look back, with laughter at Pool Etiquette of the 1930s? Tango demonstrations anyone?   The staff of the Blue Baths love the excitement of a challenge, and can source items for spectacular themes, guest speakers, musicians and cultural entertainers. Cabaret style events are a specialty; please enquire about our very own “Banquet in the Bath “… Please contact us to receive further information regarding Corporate Events.

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Dear Blue Baths Thankyou for letting Year 6 use your nice warm relaxing pools. And for putting up with us annoying kids (mainly the girls). Yours sincerely, Joshua. Willow Park School; Northcote Dear Blue Baths You's are very nice having me. I thank you for having The Blue Baths. And I thank you for having a card to stamp. And thankyou for giving Whaea Karen a job. Roses are red. Violets are blue You are The Blue Baths and I thank you From Sophia & Whaea Karen Dear Jo I wanted to email you to thankyou, Natasha and your Blue Baths team for helping make our wedding a very special day. I do not usually write these types of notes but I was so impressed with Natasha's professionalism and organisation and the service standards of your staff that I was inspired. The food was excellent and the service of a high standard. I have had dozens of unsolicited comments about the standard of the catering. Your organisation is a credit to tourism and hospitality in Rotorua and NZ. In an environment where mediocrity and lack of interest within the hospitality industry seems to be a frequent occurence, the Blue Baths stands out as an example of how to do it properly. Its great to have a reliable catering experience as a parallel to such an iconic venue. Best wishes and I am sure you and Natasha will be able to maintain your high standards. If so I would thoroughly recommend the Blue Baths to anyone who needs a top tier function venue. Kind regards, Gerald & Susan Dear Jo & Natasha Just a short note to say thankyou so very much for your efforts in making our Centennial Celebration such a high success. Everyone has been so full of praise for such an incredible evening. It was great to work with people who really care. Thanks again, Roger Gordon. Rotorua Chamber of Commerce Fletcher Aluminium Gala Dinner On Behalf of Fletcher Aluminium, I want to thank the team at The Blue Baths, for helping make our gala Dinner such a huge success. Our group of delegates expect a very high standard of service wherever they go and I have received nothing but positive feedback about the dinner. Everyone went the extra mile to make sure our needs were met. It is a credit to you all! Off Broadway was a huge success and proved very popilar with the guests. I have had a number of people request their details for future events. Natasha, please extend our thanks to everyone that was involved on the night. Regards, Janette Lewis. Fletcher Aluminium Dear Judy Feedback from our Friday night dinner in The Tearoom has been great.  Everyone was happy with the venue and the food was great. My son attended the Boys High Ball on Saturday night and he had a great time too, what a busy weekend you guys had... On behalf of Wildlands, thankyou for making it a great night for us on Friday. Kind regards, Henny. Wildland Consultants Ltd Hi Natasha I just wanted to say a big thankyou to you & your team for a fantastic night. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed their evening and thought the venue was stunning. We will have no hesitation in recommending The Blue Baths as a function venue. Kind regards, Mel. Sileni Estate Dear Natasha Just a brief note for your assistance towards the success of the Welcome Function for our client. We have had very positive feedback fro mthe sponsor - and the delegate who really enjoyed the evening. Thanks again & kind regards, Pamela. PR - Conference Consultants & Association Managers

Take a trip down memory lane as you wander through the former adult changing rooms. Movies and displays tell stories of personalities, champion swimmers and divers who used the Pools before closure in 1982. Thousands of New Zealanders loved The Blue Baths in their heyday. We know you will too.   Mixed bathing in liquid light… such was the promise of pleasure used to entice visitors to Rotorua’s Blue Baths in the 1930’s. And they came in their droves, lured by the luxury of it all.   Readers of a 1936 tourist brochure were tempted by a glamourous vision: “White-tiled…sparkling blue waters…submerged lighting…diving towers…sun balconies…richly furnished rest room. Picture this and you have not a Hollywood conception, but a mental image of the peerless Blue Baths” .   The Hollywood overtones were no coincidence. The lavish design was the creation of Public Works Architect John T Mair, inspired as much by the need to escape the drabness of the Depression in the fabulous moving picture palaces of the day as by the images of clean and cool Californian architecture which flickered on the screen. For more information on this venue please contact the Historic Venues team.   Museum Hours: 10:00am - 5:00pm daily

With a recreational rather than a medicinal focus, the new baths were a by-word for the good life. Built during the Great Depression, the thoroughly modern swimming establishment was a considerable break away from Rotorua’s other Government bath houses, both architecturally and in attitude.   Where they promised health, the Blue baths promised only pleasure. Where they offered treatments for a variety of ailments from gout to psoriasis, The Blue Baths offered movie-style glamour, for an afternoon at least.   The Blue baths were the last gasp of New Zealand’s large scale spa development, begun in the nineteenth century by colonial dreamers who envisaged a great spa in the South Seas and had set about recreating the Dominion as the premier watering hole for the Empire.   The Blue Baths were the final symbol of the government’s intention to fulfil that dream and attract more tourists, and proof positive of the New Zealand Dominions claim to being one of the world’s most attractive playgrounds.   Mixed bathing was the highlight of those attractions. For the first time, men and women could get (almost) naked, together in public – a reflection of the changing attitudes and increasingly relaxed mores in existence after the First World War.   The intention was also to make Rotorua the chief centre of the Dominions sporting activities. To that end, the Blue Baths also offered instruction in “fancy and scientific swimming” as well as diving tuition. Its swimming and diving carnivals became the stuff of legends, as did the sporting stars who hailed from the district.   However, it nearly didn’t happen. They almost didn’t get built. Work started right enough and the smaller juvenile pool opened to great acclaim and large crowds on December 21st 1931. For more information on this venue please contact the Historic Venues team.

The Government Balneologist, Dr JDC Duncan declared: “Judging by tonight, it looks as though it will not be a bath but a sardine tin, but, I hope that when all the pools are complete we shall have room for all the world and his wife, for that is the idea of mixed bathing.   We hope to make this the Mecca of Rotorua”. Two minutes after the official portion of the opening had concluded the first swimmer was in the water. Within minutes, the number had swelled to more than 200. However following such a promising beginning, work on The Blue Baths ground to a halt. The Government changed, the money ran out, and completion of stage two was temporarily discontinued.   One year later on December 23 1932, the main bath was opened, albeit without tiles. And once again, hampered by funds, work was delayed. The Blue Baths now had two pools but still no diving stage, while the front of the building remained incomplete with no offices, vestibule or tearooms.   Finally, the government decided to finish what it had begun – “to provide modern facilities for bathing in Rotorua, in keeping with the requirement of an up-to-date tourist resort”. On June 23rd 1933 cabinet voted to dip into the public purse so work on the baths could resume. For more information on this venue please contact the Historic Venues team.

The mood in Rotorua was jubilant. The Rotorua Morning Post editorial the following day congratulated the government on its decision to complete the new building.   “They are a unique attraction and an asset to the whole of the Dominion. Already it is impossible to visit Rotorua without visiting the blue Baths but as the baths become known abroad, the time will come when it will be impossible to visit New Zealand without visiting the baths”   Relief gangs were engaged for maintenance work, there was a flurry of activity from plasterers, plumbers, chippies and sparkies as building proceeded apace, and by New Years Eve in 1933 the baths were finally opened in their full splendour.   People flocked there from all over to luxuriate in their warm blue waters. Visitors wrote to the paper singing the praises and professing the baths to be not only among the finest in the world, but the talk of most foreign countries. The governments gamble had paid off.   Even the intervention of the Second World War did little to dim people’s enthusiasm for the baths, though the threat from enemy shipping proved an effective deterrent to visitors from abroad, severely curtailing the number of swimmers for the duration of the conflict.   The war years provided others with somewhat less pleasant memories of the baths – the Tearooms were commandeered by the dental section of the Royal New Zealand Airforce.   Downstairs, people still swam, but upstairs, the Tearooms were unrecognisable. The dainty china and silver teaspoons, frilled and starched aprons and caps, café tables and chairs were carefully packed away and put into storage between 1942 and 1943. In their place were leather and steel recliners, all manner of chemicals and various instruments of torture.   Tens of thousands of young men passed through the makeshift dental clinic on their way to war as 400 new recruits every six weeks had their teeth checked. For more information on this venue please contact the Historic Venues team.

But in the end, the mass appeal of the Blue Baths overcame all else…..even continuing problems with the water supply. The loss of their original water source in 1942 sparked a public outcry, when instead of piping in sparkling azure water from Whakarewarewa’s famed Rachel Springs; the baths were tapped directly into the town’s geothermal bores. The water was no longer blue, but cloudy white and sulphurous and there was some talk it was dangerous – the feeling being that if a swimmer disappeared beneath the waters, he would not be noticed.   But still they came. The problem was eventually solved in 1954 by using water from the town supply, merely heated by the thermal bores. The baths were now just a swimming pool with no mineral properties. No longer luxurious and beginning to show signs of neglect they still managed to captivate successive generations of swimmers and their fame grew.   In the greedy and short-sighted eighties though, it seemed the dream had come to an end. Once heralded as the finest swimming establishment in the southern hemisphere, the baths were closed in 1982. Widely acknowledged as one of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture anywhere, the building was left to decay, slowly crumbling amid clouds of sulphurous steam.   But the Blue Baths are obviously blessed by the gods. Though they did not have a charmed existence after they closed, they did continue to exist, escaping both the bulldozers and threat of being made-over into a martial arts and fitness centre. In 1999, a joint project between the Rotorua District Council and developer Mike Romanes saw the Blue Baths painstakingly and lovingly restored. The Blue Baths reopened 21st December 1999, 68 years to the day they originally charmed the world.   Museum Hours: 10:00am - 5:00pm daily   For more information on this venue please contact the Historic Venues team.