Meskó Csaba: Thermal Baths - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

All these hotels feature modern medicinal baths and medical facilities. Services offered by the Gellért Medicinal Baths are at the disposal of the guests staying at the Gellért Hotel. The original temperature of the spring waters used in the hotels on Margaret Island is 70°C, cooled to 34-40 degrees in the pools. The medicinal waters used in the Thermal Hotel Hélia are supplied by Margaret Island springs opened in 1867. Precious thermal waters conveyed through pipelines from Margaret Island serve as the basis of medical cures available to guests of the Hotel Acquincum.

In recognition of the paramount importance of Budapest's thermal waters, in 1996 the Cabinet and the Ministry of Public Welfare both issued a decree providing for the modernisation of the relevant facilities guaranteeing quality water supplies and the availability of improved services for those wishing to enjoy the city’s medicinal baths. This legislation also ensures that by 2002 each and every swimming pool and open air bath will have installed an up-to- date filtering system.

A city of baths: Budapest

It was as early as 1875-76 that the modern Hungarian codification of the functions, supervision and proprietorship of the country’s baths began. In 1891, the Balneological Association of the Countries Cinder the Holy Crown was formed. The association, which represented general practitioners, physicians employed by spas, balneology experts, owners and lessees of baths, and plants bottling mineral water, endeavoured “to cultivate and popularise balneology and its ancillary sciences and to improve the treatment of the country’s baths and mineral waters". The founding meeting elected Professor Vilmos Tauffer president and Dr. Samuel Low general secretary. The association managed to focus public interest, as well as professional and official attention, on baths and watering places.

1922 saw the founding of the Budapest Spa City Association. The founders’ meeting was addressed by Count Albert Apponyi, a politician held in very high esteem at the time. In 1925, the association elected the great-grandson of Palatine Joseph, Dr. Ferenc József president, who assumed de facto leadership and acted as nominal president. He was a vocal spokesman for the idea of Budapest Spa City.

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