Meskó Csaba: Thermal Baths - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)
Cinder the reign of King Sigismund, Buda was elevated to the rank of royal seat. The prosperity that followed this change in the town’s status had a vitalising effect on its bathing life. A separate chapter of Buda’s legal code is devoted to the issue of baths, declaring that public bathing houses are important scenes of the town’s social life. Of the medicinal baths open to the public to this day, Rác Bath was likely built in the fifteenth century, under King Sigismund. Later on, under King Matthias it was known as the royal bath, as it was, according to contemporary accounts, connected to the monarch’s palace by a covered corridor to provide convenient access for its majestic patrons. The heyday of Buda was also the heyday of baths. The Turkish occupation of Hungary brought with it another golden age of baths. The Turks built baths by their mosques and caravanserais. Their religious beliefs forbade the use of still water for the purposes of personal hygiene, which is why they would erect their baths above springs abounding in hot water. What with the profusion of thermal springs in Buda, Turkish baths in Hungary were significantly different from those in Turkey proper. In contrast to the original layout of a typical Turkish bath, here the central space was not the sweating chamber but the pool hall with its several pools. The Turkish baths of Buda represented a cross between the original Turkish and the ancient Roman bathing cultures. It was in this period that the still-functioning Rudas Baths - called the green-pillared one by the Turks themselves - and the Király (King) Baths were built. As testified by the verses carved into the stone plaque in the building’s wall, Sultan Suleiman and Mustapha Sokollu built the bath previously called Császár (Emperor). The cupola-topped bath, which exists to this day, was then called Bey Veli’s Bath. When a century and a half of Turkish rule came to an end, the majority of Buda’s Turkish baths were allowed to crumble, and even the ones which were restored were denied further development. Then with the decline of bathing culture the baths themselves gradually disappeared. The next upturn in the history of bathing occurred in the wake of scientific progress. The nineteenth century saw significant developments in balneology, medicine and, last but not least, in the technologies of deep drilling. In 1867 the mining engineer Vilmos Zsigmondy bored his first artesian spring on Margaret Island, a 118.5 metre deep well 7
