Beth J. Harpaz, New York: Most spas take pride in providing a thoroughly modern experience, offering the latest product formulas, complex therapies and state-of-the-art facilities.

But a half-dozen new spas have opened this year in landmark hotels and historic places, and are taking their inspiration from their surroundings' past.

In May, The Spa of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, opened, offering treatments that spa manager Kate Mearns calls "a modern-day interpretation of five centuries of wellness." For example, a treatment using hot stones, linen wraps and cool aromatherapy cloths was inspired by a Powhatan Indian sweathouse ritual.

Traditional remedies and ingredients also inspired the spa's lavender baths, lemon verbena manicures and massage oils containing cypress, juniper and rosemary. Any profits the spa makes will be returned to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Different Ways to Pamper Yourself

"Everything they do is done with integrity, to preserve the past," said Mearns, who is also former director of the International Spa Association. In February, the Beach Plum Spa opened in Plymouth, Massachusetts, at the John Carver Inn, where 75 percent of the guests are visiting Plimoth Plantation to learn about the Pilgrims.

Others go whale-watching, or visit the replica of the Mayflower in the town's picturesque harbor. "They do a lot of walking while they're here, and they're tired," said Debra Catania, whose family owns the inn.

"I wanted to have a spa, but I didn't want to have a generic spa in an area that's so well-known for history and the ocean. So I came up with the beach plum theme."

Beach plums are fragrant wild roses, with hips rich in anti-oxidants. Early New Englanders used them in jams. Beach Plum Spa uses them in oils, lotions and other products.

"They smell wonderful," Catania said. She also used plum as a design color, along with cream and a crystal silver that she says evokes the ocean and stones. "I want people to walk in and feel like they're still in Plymouth," she explained.

"They're not in an Asian spa at the Mandarin Oriental. You have to go traditional 18th century here; I didn't want the zen feel, the plain bamboo. But I couldn't put a picture of a pilgrim on my wall in a spa."

The happy marriage of modern spas and historic places is being driven by the demographics of the aging post-World War II generation, according to Joe Goldblatt, who teaches at Temple University's School of Tourism and Hospitality Management in Philadelphia.

Goldblatt said spas with connections to historic places provide two things to aging boomers: a way to heal physical maladies, and an antidote to what he called "rootlessness." "As people age, they want to connect to their roots," he said.

"The world is rootless. People are moving all the time and are not connecting with their families. As they age, they become more interested in history. History gives them a sense of grounding and gravitas."