Slowly the light dims and via a nozzle, the space is filling up with countless, barely visible grains of salt. The walls are alive with the flashing and gleaming of the tiny crystals during this unconventional health treatment.
Deep breathing can be heard from fellow patients, and a slight cough somewhere. Lounge music is playing softly, and, implausibly for an artificial cave, there's even the murmuring sound of a babbling brook.
This scene is repeated several times a day in the middle of Bad Kissingen, a German spa town that offers 19th-century-style treatments for chronic health complaints. The salt cave is located next to the old Town Hall.
Peter Schmidt and his wife moved to Bad Kissingen to treat people suffering from such maladies as high blood pressure, asthma and narrowing of the arteries. They say inhaling brine of iodine bromine in the quiet relaxed atmosphere of the salt cave helps.
"We searched a long time for the right spot. We discovered Bad Kissingen more or less by coincidence," Schmidt says.
Spa treatments seem old fashioned in Europe, but they are alive and well here.
Like the Schmidts, many private health treatment businesses believe investment in Bad Kissingen will pay off.
The municipality and the state of Bavaria are convinced the sick will still pay to try out salt when modern drugs no longer help them, and stay at luxury hotels and eat fine food while doing so.
Public money has been poured into a thermal bath complex, KissSalis, which is one of the most modern facilities of its kind anywhere in Germany.
A clinic for psychosomatic therapy has gained renown far beyond Bavaria's borders, while the Kissingen summer festival is one of the region's major music highlights.
Altogether, some 35 million euros ($A52.52 million) have been spent on renovating and modernising the town's spa facilities. Bad Kissingen records some 1.5 million overnight stays every year.
"We regard ourselves as being a classic spa town, one that has developed into a modern health and tourism centre, attractive for short stays and for congresses," says spa director Frank Oette.
Last July, Bad Kissingen was put on Germany's list proposing status as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.
Cultural affairs officer Peter Weidisch said; "Next year we aim, along with 12 further spas in Germany, the Czech Republic, England, Italy and France, to present a formal Great Spas of Europe application." The chances of success aren't bad, for Bad Kissingen has a lot to offer from bygone times. This year the city is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Regentenbau - a classic palatial complex that is one of the prime examples of German spa architecture.
"We have also been fortunate that in the last 700 years, we have not been devastated by war," Weidisch adds.
Another attraction is the villa where Germany's "Iron Chancellor" Count Otto von Bismarck spent 15 stays in Bad Kissingen.
He put his stamp on world politics with his so-called Bad Kissingen Decree of 1877 which ruled that Germany would stop wars of conquest.
During a stay he also ushered in a new era of social welfare policy with the creation of retirement pensions.
Visitors to the Bismarck Museum can learn how the corpulent statesman managed during one stay to shed 22kg.
