Bucket List / Experience Goals
Soak In The Budapest Thermal Baths
Ticked off in March 2025
Sit in steaming yellow-walled pools while locals play chess, even with snow falling around you.
The adventure
Széchenyi looks more like a palace than a swimming pool: yellow walls, domes and statues around big outdoor pools, steam rising off the water into the cold air. Older men stand chest-deep at floating chess boards, considering their next move for what seems like hours.
Inside there are more than a dozen thermal pools at different temperatures, plus saunas, steam rooms and cold plunges, fed by springs that come out of the ground hot and full of minerals. Budapest has been bathing like this since Roman times, and the Ottomans added domed bathhouses that are still in use. Go on a winter evening, with frost in the air and the water at 38°C, and it's the best way there is to warm up.
Why it’s epic
- Széchenyi Baths, opened in 1913, with 18 pools.
- Chess in the water at Széchenyi.
- 16th-century Ottoman bathhouses such as Rudas.
What it is
Budapest sits on more than 100 hot springs, and its bathhouses range from Ottoman domes to the huge neo-baroque Széchenyi, one of the largest medicinal baths in Europe.
How to do it
Buy a ticket at the door or online. Széchenyi and Gellért are the famous ones; Rudas has an Ottoman dome and a rooftop pool.
Top tip
Bring flip-flops and a towel to save on hire, and go in winter when the outdoor pools steam in the cold.
Need to know
- Swimwear is required in most baths; some have nude or single-sex days.
- Weekend evenings get crowded with party crowds.
- Take care in the hottest pools if you have heart or blood pressure problems.
Plan this trip
- Rough cost
- Under £750 per person, including flights from the UK
- Time needed
- Half a day
- Best time to go
- All year; winter for steam rising off the pools
- Fly into
- BUD airport
Entry is affordable; cabins and spa treatments cost extra.
Do it yourself
My experience
Ticked off, but the full story is still to be written up.
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