Buza Péter: Spring and Fountains - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)
Hidden behind the ornamental fence is the Gül Baba Spring. Together with several more natural wells it provides water for Rudas Baths already in a depth of several hundred metres, and around Városliget [City Park] are about a thousand metres below the surface. That is the reason why in 1870 Vilmos Zsigmond had to drill so deep to reach the medicinal waters used in today’s Széchenyi Baths. The springs supplying thermal water to the medicinal baths of Buda gush up along the fault lines thrusting the Buda hills deep below the surface. Near the surface hot water mixes with rain and melted snow percolating down from the hills. Therefore, the natural thermal springs of Buda are so-called mixed water springs, even though 95 per cent of the output is made up of the medicinal component welling up from the bowels of the earth. Another factor affecting the temperature of the springs is that the karst water filling the cracks of the layers of limestone and dolomite up to the level of the Danube is naturally much colder near the surface than that coming from the deep, and thus the former significantly cools the latter. (At the same time, water seeping in can also pollute the springs. That is why the 7
