What Is Laugarvatn Fontana?
A geothermal bath complex on the shore of Lake Laugarvatn, on the Golden Circle between Þingvellir and Geysir. It has shallow interconnected pools at different temperatures, steam rooms built directly over a natural hot spring, and steps down into the lake for a cold plunge.
It also runs a rye bread bakery in the black sand beside the water, where dough is buried for 24 hours and dug out in front of you.
The site sits at Hverabraut 1 in the village of Laugarvatn, about an hour from Reykjavík and 25 minutes from Geysir.
The Baths
Smaller and quieter than the famous lagoons, which is the point.
The pools are shallow and interconnected, held at different temperatures so you can move between them rather than settling into one. None is deep enough to swim in properly.
The steam rooms are the distinctive part. They are built over an active hot spring, so the steam rising through the floor is coming straight out of the ground rather than from a boiler.
You can hear the spring working underneath you, and the humidity is total. Ten minutes in there is plenty for most people.
The lake is the cold end of the cycle. Steps lead from the deck down into Laugarvatn, and the contrast between a steam room and an Icelandic lake is the whole experience.
There is no swim-up bar and no ritual to follow. You work out your own cycle of hot, steam and cold.
Baths open 10:00 to 21:00 from June to September and 11:00 to 21:00 from October to May, according to Laugarvatn Fontana.
The steam rooms sit directly over a hot spring, so the steam comes up through the floor.
The Rye Bread
Rúgbrauð baked in the ground, and it is a genuine Icelandic tradition rather than a tourist invention.
The dough is dense, dark and slightly sweet, made with rye flour, and it goes into a sealed pot. The pot is buried in the black sand at the lake edge, where geothermal heat holds the ground at baking temperature.
It stays there for about 24 hours. There is no oven, no flame and no thermostat, and the result is a moist, almost cake-like loaf with a distinct sweetness that comes from the long slow bake.
Icelandic households did this for generations wherever hot ground was available. Laugarvatn is one of the few places where you can still watch it happen.
Served warm with butter, it is very good. Served warm with butter and smoked trout, which is how the tour does it, it is the best thing you will eat on the Golden Circle.
The Bread-Baking Demonstration
A short, well-run thirty minutes, and worth booking rather than turning up for.
Staff walk you down to the black sand, dig out the pot with a shovel and open it in front of you. Steam comes off it immediately.
The demonstration covers how the dough is made, why the ground here works and what the geothermal field is doing underneath. You then taste the bread with butter and smoked trout.
Tours run daily at 10:15, 11:45 and 14:30 in summer, and at 11:45 and 14:30 in the off season.
Adult tickets are 3,500 ISK, with 3,000 ISK for seniors, 2,500 ISK for ages 6 to 15 and free entry for under-sixes. The bread tour is priced separately from the baths.
Book ahead. The tour became considerably busier after appearing on television, and slots fill in summer.
Whole loaves are sometimes available to buy depending on how much the ground has produced that day.
How Long to Spend
Between 90 minutes and three hours, depending on what you book.
The baths alone need about 90 minutes including changing, which is enough to work through the pools, the steam rooms and a couple of lake plunges.
Adding the bread tour takes it to around two and a half hours, since the demonstration is 30 minutes and you will want to be dry for it.
Three hours is comfortable if you also want a coffee on the deck, which in summer is a genuinely good place to sit.
Anything less than 90 minutes is not worth the drive.
Long summer evenings on the deck are the best version of Fontana.
Where It Fits on the Golden Circle
Laugarvatn is on the route rather than off it, which is Fontana's main practical advantage.
Þingvellir is about 30 minutes west, Geysir 25 minutes north and Gullfoss 35 minutes north. The village sits almost exactly between the three main stops.
That makes Fontana the natural midday break rather than an end-of-day soak. Bathe, eat bread, then carry on to Geysir and Gullfoss.
The Secret Lagoon at Flúðir is 30 minutes away and works better as an end-of-day stop, since it is further south on the way home.
Doing both in one day is possible and probably excessive, since two long soaks leaves little time for the sights.
Our guide to what the Golden Circle covers sets out the distances between all of the stops.
Efstidalur dairy farm, with its ice cream and its restaurant overlooking the cow shed, is ten minutes from Laugarvatn and pairs well with a Fontana morning.
Through the Seasons
Same water, different experience.
Winter is when the steam rooms and the lake plunge make most sense, with the contrast between the water and the air at its sharpest. Laugarvatn is dark enough for aurora on a clear night.
Spring and autumn are the quietest, with the pools often close to empty on a weekday.
Summer gives long light on the deck, and the 21:00 closing means you can be in the water at nine at night in daylight.
The lake freezes at the edges in a hard winter, which limits the cold plunge to a hole in the ice at times.
Our page on Laugarvatn Fontana covers the practical details for each season.
Practical Points
Six things worth knowing before you go.
You must shower without a swimsuit before entering, as at every Icelandic pool. Attendants check and it is not negotiable.
Bring swimwear and a towel, or hire both on site at extra cost.
Take off silver jewellery, since geothermal water tarnishes it quickly.
The site was renovated recently and reopened on 1 August 2026, so older reviews describe a different building.
Road conditions decide winter access on Routes 36 and 37, and live status is at umferdin.is.
Parking at the site is free, which is unusual on this route and worth noting after a morning at Þingvellir.
At Hjarðarland, the nearest long-running station to the route, Met Office climate data gives a July average daily high of 16.5°C, which is why the outdoor pools stay busy in summer despite the latitude.
Is Fontana Worth It?
Yes, with a clear sense of what it is not.
It is not the Blue Lagoon. There is no silica mud, no swim-up bar and no architecture worth photographing for its own sake.
What it has is the steam rooms over the spring and the lake plunge, neither of which the bigger lagoons offer, plus the bread.
The bread tour on its own is worth the stop even if you never get in the water, and plenty of visitors do exactly that.
At around half the price of the famous lagoons, on a route you are already driving, it is one of the better value stops in the country.
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