Pluto is one of the largest gay saunas in Germany: around 1,600 square metres over three floors of a former 1960s department store, a few minutes on foot from Essen main station.
The wet area has a Finnish sauna at about 90 degrees with a window onto the pool, an XXL steam labyrinth, a milder sanarium, an oriental hammam built around a heated marble slab, a whirlpool and a cold pool with a counter-current system. Upstairs there is a cinema room, relaxation cabins and the cruising areas. The lower level holds private booths, each furnished differently. A bar and lounge sit in the middle of the building, with a small smoking room off to one side, and the changing area has around 400 lockers.
The house rules are stated plainly on the site: no illegal drugs, no violence, no sex work, no photography, and a no is taken as a no. Weekends bring several hundred men through the door, a good number of them from the Netherlands and Belgium as well as from the rest of the Ruhr.
