Meskó Csaba: Thermal Baths - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)
wearing swimming costumes. Besides its five pools of various temperatures the section has its own sauna. From here, a passage leads on to the open-air lido bath. The public men’s baths department, originally built in 1927, was converted into a communal bath in 1981, to create the first medicinal bath in Budapest offering treatment to whole families and married couples. The section towards the Vidámpark (amusement park) houses the Comprehensive Physiotherapy Department, which works as a day hospital. The department was established in place of the women’s public department in 1982 originally with forty beds, which could receive eighty patients a day - forty in the morning, forty in the afternoon. In the pool hall attached to the department there is a pool for underwater gymnastics, for sitting and for a traction bath. Increasing demands necessitated the enlargement of the hospital department. Today it has 76 beds receiving 152 patients per day. Treatment is provided, on the orders of the hospital’s doctors, at the various departments of the Széchenyi Baths. The open-air lido bath was built in 1927, across from the Fővárosi Nagycirkusz (Budapest Grand Circus). The section, which originally only opened between May and September, was made suitable for all-year-round operation in 1963. The lido provides refreshment, relaxation, physical exercise and amusement for its guests with three pools The Széchenyi Swimming Pool fc,. v.m r 1 s 1 r .->£.• • gm . .v ers 37
