Exciting: 2 new Danube beaches and pools can open this summer in Budapest

Officially, you can bathe in the River Danube in Budapest in two places: access to the Római Beach is free for everybody. Meanwhile, the Flava Beach at the Kopaszi Dam near the MOL Tower is quite expensive for ordinary citizens. However, a pool and a beach may open this summer in Budapest, providing an opportunity to bathe in the River Danube, which is becoming cleaner year by year.

There used to be lots of floating pools on the Danube

We wrote before that the River Danube is much cleaner than, for example, the River Seine. Therefore, if Hungary had organised the 2024 Summer Olympics, the swimming marathons could have been held in the Danube without problems, and athletes would not have become sick after swimming in the polluted Seine.

In Budapest, open-air, floating wooden swimming pools on the river have a history, starting in the 19th century and continuing until WWII. Such pools were a common sight from both Buda and Pest. The last wooden swimming pool operated in front of the Hungarian Parliament even in the summer of 1944. During the siege (December 1944-February 1945), it was destroyed, just like the city around it. The Communist leadership did not reestablish them due to the high pollution level of the Danube’s water caused by the factories upstream, the lack of wood and the risk of infection.

Bathing in the Danube: the Római Beach and the Flava Beach

Experts started talking about reopening swimming pools and beaches near the Danube in the 2020s as the water of the Danube became less polluted. An NGO, Valyo, measured water quality in 2024 and found that – except for periods of heavy rains and floods – the water quality of the Danube is acceptable for swimming and bathing. A good example is the Római Beach, which is free and accessible to many during the hottest days of the summer.