Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

built near the Elizabeth Bridge and it was these three swimmers’ ‘baths’ from where the career of many a talented swimmer and water-polo player was launched between the two world wars, that glorious period of Hungarian water-sports. The popularity of swimming and bathing is demonstrated by the fact that in 1909 there were as many as thirteen hygienic and medicinal baths as well as seven swimming pools in operation along the Danube from the Óbuda embankment to Lágymányos. These, however, were frequented, except by the boldest customers, in the warm seasons only. The first indoor pool was not opened until 1930 when the Sports Swimming Pool was built on Margaret Island to plans by none other than Olympic ChampionAlfréd Hajós, who in the meantime had reached the peak of a spectacular career as an architect.

A classic form of physical exercise, gymnastics, also appeared fairly early on in Pest-Buda. In 1817 Vilmos Egger opened the First Public Gymnasium on the premises of the Lutheran school in Deák tér.

The first sports club to be formed in Hungary, the Pest Association for Physical Exercise, was established in 1840; it was from this club that the prestigious Pest Gymnastics Association emerged in the 1860s. Renamed National Gymnastics Association, the club earned its fame as the centre of training P.E. teachers

The hall of the National Gymnastics Association

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