Budapest Bath Culture

I stepped out into a sunny day with a small towel wrapped around my swimsuit. With the temperature hovering just above freezing, I felt a cold bite as my bare feet tapped the frosty pavement. Thirty quick steps later, a prickly sensation was followed by warm relief.

I soaked in the misty pool of Gellért’s thermal baths, a famous spa and hotel perched on the east bank of the Danube, in the center of Budapest. Hungary’s capital and was named after the three merged cities of Buda, Obuda, and Pest. It is believed that ‘Buda’ comes from the Slavic word voda (meaning water). The city is home to over 100 natural geothermal springs, which feed more than 160 bathhouses across the country. Blissfully submerged, the reason Budapest was dubbed the City of Baths in 1934 seemed undeniably clear to me.

We visited two popular bathhouses to get a taste of the local bathing culture, starting with Gellért. By the time we strolled across the Liberty bridge, paid admission, and navigated the maze of locker rooms and dressing cabins, it was 9 o’clock. The pool was still relatively empty as we arrived, but it wasn’t long before we were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder around the pool’s periphery.

Budapest’s Bathing History

As popular with tourists as these bathhouses now are, bath culture is deeply rooted in the region’s history. From the…