Gellért Baths

Interesting facts

A hospital and bath stood on this site as early as the 13th century, associated with King Andrew II of Hungary.

The Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi praised the bath's water in the 17th century as a cure for the French disease and seven other ailments.

Some of the final construction work in 1918 was carried out by Russian prisoners of war.

A stained-glass window in the complex illustrates Buda's Death, the epic poem by the Hungarian poet János Arany.

The bubbling pool added in 1934 was driven by 84 specially made jets powered by a 14-horsepower motor.

In German the bath was historically known as the Blocksbad.

For most of their history the thermal sections were split by sex; men and women only began bathing together in 2013.

Through the 1930s the photographer Sándor Pusztai captured prominent guests in their swimwear, a series later known as Ministers in Swimming Trunks.

The complex has around a dozen pools, two of them filled with ordinary rather than thermal water.

Its halls have served as a film set for productions including Matthew Barney's Cremaster 5 and the Hollywood comedy I Spy.

Why it is worth it

The Gellért Baths are the most theatrical of Budapest's thermal baths: a late Secession (Hungarian Art Nouveau) palace of water built into the same block as the Hotel Gellért at the foot of Gellért Hill, on the Buda bank of the Danube. Architects Artúr Sebestyén, Ármin Hegedűs and Izidor Sterk designed the complex, which went up between 1912 and 1918, with domes whose curves borrow from the Baroque. People were bathing in warm spring water on this spot long before: a medieval hospital stood here, and under Ottoman rule in the 16th and 17th centuries there was a bath known as the "muddy" one, after the mineral silt that settled on the bottom of its pools.

The entrance on Kelenhegyi út is flanked by a sculpture group by József Róna on the theme of healing. From a mosaic-lined vestibule you pass into the central hall, 74 metres long and 11 metres wide, ringed by a gallery and covered with a coloured glass roof. The indoor swimming pool has a roof that can be opened, and from the corridors on either side you can watch the water from below through small porthole windows. The richest decoration is in the thermal sections, where the walls are covered in glazed Zsolnay ceramics, and marble columns, stained glass from the Róth workshop and small sculptures by Miklós Ligeti complete the ensemble.

The complex kept growing after it opened. An outdoor wave pool, a novelty in the Europe of its day, was laid out in the former garden in 1926–27, and in 1934 a bubbling pool was added in what had been the hotel's glass-domed winter garden. Bombing at the end of the Second World War wrecked the women's section, and for decades it was rebuilt plainly; a restoration in 2007–08 brought back the mosaics, marble and glass. The water, rich in calcium, magnesium and sulphate, rises from the springs of Gellért Hill and fills the thermal pools at 35 to 40 °C.

Getting there

The baths stand on Szent Gellért tér in Budapest's 11th district, by the Buda end of the Liberty Bridge; Lágymányos is about 1.4 km away. Szent Gellért tér – Műegyetem station on metro line M4 is a few minutes' walk from the entrance. Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD) is about 17 km away.

Gellért Baths

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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