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

- a swimming pool, a shallow pool filled with thermal water, and a lido pool. The shallow thermal pool is often the scene of chess games.

On the premises of the lido there are two Finnish-style saunas, separate nude sunbathing terraces for men and women, and a restaurant. The ’swimming-costume’ section of the medicinal bath department, accessible via the above-mentioned passage, is also available for the lido’s patrons. A well-room for drinking cures stands opposite the entrance of the baths.

The medicinal water of the Széchenyi Baths is a thermal water containing sodium alongside its calcium-magnesium-hydro-car- bonic components with a significant amount of fluoride and metasilicic acid. It is indicated for degenerative ailments of the joints, chronic and semi-acute arthritis, orthopaedic treatment and follow-up care after accidents. Drinking cures based on the waters are indicated for the treatment of chronic inflammatory ailments of the stomach, the gastric tract, the gall-ducts and the respiratory system.

Gellert medicinal baths 2-4 Kelenhegyi út, District XI

Centuries ago thermal springs gushing forth at the foot of Gellért Hill created a muddy hollow where today’s baths are located. In the 13th century, king András II built a hospital above these springs. The settlement by the foot of the hill was called St Elizabeth’s Village, and a church dedicated to the canonised princess stood next to the springs, it was here that St Elizabeth had healed and bathed the destitute, the leprous and the sick. That is what the Margaret Legend refers to when mentioning “the hospital of our lady St Elizabeth” beneath “the hill of St Gellért”.

The chronicler Miklós Oláh also describes, in his account of Buda’s beautiful spots and sights, the baths which were already well-known at the time, mentioning among them the miraculous springs that well up within twenty feet of the Danube and are used to “cure the pocked and the hectic”.

The open-air bath was named, for its muddy waters, Sárosfürdő (Muddy Bath).

The healing powers of the bath, which was called Achick ilidje (open-air thermal water) in Turkish times, was also remarked upon by Evliya Cheleby:

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