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

The Sáros (Muddy) Baths around 1880

"... people arrive in carts. It soothes French pox and seven other maladies. The bath is efficacious if one waits until the whole body turns red and upon coming out of the water keeps oneself warm.”

After the retaking of Buda Castle, the bath was appropriated by the treasury, but later Leopold 1 also donated this one to his court physician. After a number of successive construction and reconstruction jobs as well as a series of different owners, the bath was bought by the Sagits family in 1809. There is already a description surviving from that time. The building of the Sárosfürdő stood directly by the rockface of the hill, below the cave. Besides its communal bath, it had three stone baths and eight tub baths. The pool of the communal bath was connected directly to the casings of the wellsprings. The fine-granule spring- mud brought to the surface by the water of the springs themselves would settle at the bottom and on the sides of the pool filled with clear water. Facilities were rather crude. The communal bath was divided into a men’s and a women’s section by a mere plank wall. Then, in 1832, a veritable castle was built in its place. The communal bath could be used by no less than two hundred guests at a time.

In 1894, when construction of the Francis Joseph, later Szabadság Bridge commenced, the government expropriated and subsequently demolished the bath building. In 1902 the municipality of Budapest acquired ownership of the springs from the treasury and started to prepare a project for the construction of a new baths. An open tender invitation was made for designs.

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