The motor-racing Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, just south of the nearby village of Francorchamps, also hosts the annual Formula One Belgian Grand Prix and various endurance races such as the 24 Hours of Spa.

As the site of cold springs with alleged healing properties, Spa has been frequented as a "water-taking" place since classical antiquity.

Pliny the Elder (died 79 CE) noted, "There is a famous spring in Tungri, a state of Gaul, whose water, sparkling with bubbles, has a ferruginous taste that is only noticeable when the drink is finished.

XXXI VIII)[9] The spa town grew in the Middle Ages, in the oldest iron and steel centre of Liège Province.

At the hotel "Aux Armes d’Angleterre", those present agreed to oppose the edicts of Philip II as austere and intolerant; this led to the historic 1566 "Compromise of Nobles".

In 1654, the stay of the exiled pretender to the English throne, Prince Charles, brought even greater fame to Spa.

[10] The town continued to grow as a fashionable resort in the 19th century, and was extended during the reign of King Leopold II.

In 1918, the German Army established its principal headquarters in Spa,[11] and from there the delegates set out for the French lines to meet Marshal Foch and to sue for peace in the consultations leading up to the Armistice that ended the First World War.

[12] The general headquarters of Kaiser Wilhelm II were, in 1918, the last place where he resided before his abdication due to the German surrender.

In July 1920, the town hosted the Spa Conference, a meeting of the Supreme Council, which dealt with the war reparations owed by the defeated Reich to the Allies.

These were decades of social tourism as well, with an increasingly large number of Flemish and Dutch customers, while the Walloons went en masse to the Belgian coast in Flanders.

The town borders the rural municipalities of Theux, Jalhay, Stavelot and Stoumont in the district of Verviers in the province of Liège.

[18] The light mineral waters come from recent rainfall on the Malchamps Moor, roughly 4 km (2.5 mi) south-west of the town and are filtered through layers of peat, quartz, and phyllite.

Spa is quite gloomy, although averaging both a drier and sunnier climate than nearby locations Stavelot and Malmedy that are also surrounding the race track.

The coat of arms for Spa is a stylized pouhon housed in a neoclassical monument to the covering surrounded by a protective wall opened its facade.