Meskó Csaba: Thermal Baths - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)
stop of the Danube steamers as well as being serviced by the baths’ own delightful omnibuses, which run from Deák tér every ten minutes. In addition, there is a hackney-coach station nearby. ” In 1931 the baths were renamed St Imre Baths in honour of the nine hundredth anniversary of the death of King Stephen’s son. A decree issued by the interior minister in 1934 recognised the institution as a medicinal bath. The building, severely damaged during the war, was only reopened in 1965, once again as the Rác Baths. It is regrettable that neither the completely destroyed tub baths, nor the men’s steam department has been reconstructed to this day. The surviving steam department admits men and women on alternate days (men on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, women on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays); the baths are closed on Sundays. The interior reconstruction of the Ybl-designed dome above what once was the men’s steam department was carried out in 1980; the fitness room below it is especially popular with the baths' female customers. Regular patrons of the baths on specific days avail themselves of such services as refreshing massage, medicinal massage on doctor’s orders, underwater massage and chiropody. They regard the baths as a scene of social life. In the thermal steam department there are four medicinal pools each with water of a different temperature, a dry steam and a humid steam chamber. The thermal water of the Rác Baths is a sulphate mineral water containing sodium alongside its calcium-magnesium-hydro-car- bonic components with a significant amount of ionised fluoride. It is indicated for arthritis, chronic and semi-acute gout, Bechterew disease, chronic back ache, muscular rheumatism, neuralgic ailments, sciatica and other forms of chronic neuralgia, as well as ailments of an orthopaedic nature and for post-accident care. Király medicinal baths 82-84 Fő utca, District II Turkish architecture involved one of two methods in the construction of domes: in the one the dome is supported by pillars, the Rudas Baths being a fine specimen of this; in the other, simpler method the spherical cupola rests on the outer walls of the bathing hall or on their squat 25
