The 10 best saunas in the USA

The 2019 original that set the template for the modern American bathhouse — eight thermal pools including a rooftop, one of the largest saunas in the city, steam, hammam, daily aufguss and a restaurant, in moody industrial Williamsburg.

A 50,000-square-foot Brooklyn megabath billed as the largest banya in the country — Eastern European banyas, Finnish saunas, Moroccan and Turkish hammams, a salt room and a snow room, ritual after ritual.

A three-storey Russian-led banya on the Bayview waterfront fusing parilka, hammam, German sauna and Roman bathing, with venik platza, a rooftop deck over the bay, and a restaurant and bar.

Still run by two owners on alternating weeks — radiant parilka, Turkish steam, a redwood Finnish sauna, an ice plunge and a roof deck, walk-in and gloriously gritty, with oak-leaf platza and borscht.

A wood-fired Finnish cabin on a floating barge at Pier B, windows over Lake Superior and a ladder straight into it — by the operator's account the only US sauna whose cold plunge is the lake itself.

A four-storey jjimjilbang in College Point with themed chambers — salt, gold, jade, halotherapy — an ice room, indoor and outdoor hydrotherapy pools, and a Kids Castle that makes it genuinely family-friendly.

A 'deconstructed bathhouse' of five private wood-fired saunas on the Point San Pablo coast, plunging straight into San Francisco Bay, with a stated mission of subsidising low-income QTBIPOC visitors.

The small South Slope bathhouse that built America's communal-contrast model — cedar sauna, aspen wet sauna, cold plunge, heated-bench rest, phones banned — and rolled it across the South.

A banya running since 2004 that blends Russian, Turkish, Finnish and Japanese bathing — parilka, eucalyptus steam, ice bath, saltwater pool — with platza treatments and a nap room.

A members-led wellness club above the Eastside Exchange with hot pools, sauna, steam and a cold plunge looking over the Willamette and downtown Portland; day passes bookable for non-members.