Budapest: A purifying, old-time bath - smelling of "eggs”

 By: Pontus Elmrin, Vanessa Sidlo, Natalie Josefsson and Lisa Slottner

In the heart of Buda, the west end of Budapest, lies an old thermal bath from the 16th century. The Király thermal bath was built by the Turkish pasha Arslan, and has most of the old interior intact. It is open to both men and women, which means that the pools are not divided into different areas depending on sex.

When searching for the bath house, the first thing that struck us was the difficulty to find it. The bath house is old and lies somewhat hidden, a few streets away from the main street. It lies beside a nice park, which further accentuates the old-timey feeling. After much ado, we finally arrived at the bath house. The second thing that struck us was the visible age of the bath house – it was very obvious that it carried an old heritage, something we weren’t used to in Sweden.

Walking down the stairs towards the pools, one couldn’t help but notice the rising smell of sulfur, permeating the air. It is a distinct feature of the bath, and many like it, that the minerals in the water alter the smell of the water and gives it the smell, for lack of a better word, like rotten eggs. The smell was decently off putting for unconditioned swedes, but we imagine that the regular visitors would get used to it. We never really got used to it, but looking past that we found the bath very interesting, with it’s old infrastructure and interior. It immediately struck us as old, and Pontus even likened it to “an old bath which gave the feeling of a bath from long time ago, maybe the 18^th century”. Little did he know, the bath was in fact older than that, and thus his predictions were spot on.

The main attraction of the bath house was the octagonal pool, 36 degrees warm, and the Turkish dome which rests above it. Photos show the bath from inside and outside.