A legendary spa reopened in Budapest – Photos, VIDEO!

The mineral water that can be found in the Pesterzsébet spa is unique in Hungary since it contains not only salt but also iodine and bromide. Furthermore, the buildings serving the demands of the bathers are very modern, so it is absolutely worth a visit for everybody who wants to relax or enjoy the summer on a cool Budapest beach.

A unique spa and beach

According to index.hu, the spa does not have a long History dating back to the Ottoman times but its early 20th-century ancestor built near the Danube was already very popular in the bathing community of Budapest. Only later was it discovered that the ground hides a tremendous amount of mineral water containing not only salt but also bromide and iodine

like in only 1 or 2 other places in Hungary.

By the 1930s, the Pesterzsébet spa already had many swimming pools and even a fun pool with a unique pool wave generator. In the 1950s a new bath building was erected in the style of the Turkish baths like Rudas or Király – nobody knows how the Communist leadership could enable it. Since the spa and the beach created around it were very popular among local people, it functioned until 2005 and was reopened only this week after a total renewal. Here is a video on how it looks like now:

In fact, the most spectacular part of the new complex is the bath building. It is a general trend in Budapest that architects try to build spaces around the beaches that can be open during the whole year because this is how spas can have income and staff every month. Since the district already has a swimming pool,the local leaders wanted to create a bath with wellness section, pools that can be used by children,

spaces for relaxation and healing services.

The difficulty of the task was to create 1,000 square metres of usable bathing space for the public and hide twice that space for ventilation and machines.

Photo: MTI

As the three architects, Bence Dobos, Csaba Nagy and Zsolt Nagy, explained to Index, the solution was transforming the building into a sandwich of three layers: up and down machinery while between the two floors they placed the public bathing space. The starting point of the planning was the so-called Turkish bath built in the 1950s. They placed the different pavilions around that and created spaces from where its stone walls can be seen.

Modern spaces, beach and 13 different pools

They used almost 10 thousand square metres of granite stone because it resists the effects of the mineral water better than the ceramics. Of course, they used ceramics, too, in order to make the bath more colourful. The big central pool creates the feeling as if the water surface was contiguous and never-ending while the changing rooms were put into a so-called glass box.

According to index.hu, there are no useless spaces in the bath building, the interior is constantly changing, and the whole complex became very elegant.

There are multiple wells in the spa each having its unique mineral water composition. Around those, there are spaces for relaxation and therapy but there are saunas, pools for children and a separate pool, as well, in which people can talk or even play chess without being bothered by anything.

The beach can accept 1,800 guests while the bath 450. On the beach, there are wave pools, pools for children and, of course, a pool that can be used for even water polo matches. Unfortunately, there are no trees, but there are a lot of modern changing rooms. There are also no buffets because there will be food trucks serving the needs of the visitors.

Photo: MTI

Source: index.hu