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

pre-eminent position among establishments of a similar function. Occupying a ground space of 220 metres by 114, the building contained sixty-six rooms, which were furnished with sixteen hundred marble chairs. With a combined surface of 1,300 square metres, the four large pools held a total of two thousand cubic metres of water.

The Turks built two types of bath - the so-called ha- mam (steam bath) and the ilidje or kaplidje (thermal bath). Due to the scarcity of water endemic to the Middle East, a particularly austere policy of water consumption characterised their bathing culture whose main objective was to encourage perspiration, which is why the central room was the sweating chamber. Their baths were luxuriously spacious and designed with expedience as the main consideration.

The characteristic feature of the bathing culture of Nordic nations is the combination of various types of sweating-baths (hot-air chambers, humid steam chambers and saunas) with immersion basins containing cold water. With the alternation of extreme thermal stimuli (hot air, cold air, cold bath) the sauna-bath exercises the temperature-regulating and the circulatory system of the human body and indirectly the entire constitution, thus increasing the resistance of the healthy individual.

The bathing cültüre of Budapest

The Roman conquerors of Pannónia brought with them a passion for cleanliness. That a spring welled up on the premises of today’s Római-fürdő (Római Baths) is likely to have been a prime consideration when they chose this area to set up their permanent camp. The relics uncovered by excavations carried out in Acquincum, this town whose very name contains the root meaning water, show that the Romans installed water mains and drainage systems and built public, as well as private, baths on this location. (The site of a Roman military bath in Flórián tér has been open to the public since 1984.)

That the medicinal springs of Buda were known already under the Árpád-house monarchs is suggested by the fact that the northern part of the town (in the area of Lukács Baths and Császár Baths, the latter of which no longer exists) was called Felhévíz, while the southern quarter, today’s Tabán district, bore the name Alhévíz (CJpper and Nether Hot Waters respectively).

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