Rudas Baths

In front of you is one of the oldest thermal baths in Budapest. From outside it looks like a 19th-century building, but behind the façade hides an Ottoman dome more than four hundred years old.

1Water from the rock

Gellért Hill is laced with hot springs. Around twenty rise next to these baths, and a document from 1292 already mentions them. The Ottomans, who ruled Buda from 1541 to 1686, knew how to use them: Ali Pasha began rebuilding the bath in 1556 and his successor, Sokollu Mustafa, completed the work. They called it "the bath of the green column", because one of the eight columns supporting the vault over the pool was that colour.

The Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi described it in the 17th century: eight arches around a great pool, and a hall with a dome so vast that, he wrote, it could hold a thousand warriors.

2Famous waters

After the Ottomans were driven out, Leopold I handed the bath to the town of Buda in 1703. It was remodelled several times in the 19th century, once by Miklós Ybl, and in 1933 it was declared a medicinal bath. Its drinking hall serves water from three springs: Attila, Hungária and Juventus, whose name says it all.

The Ottomans left more than three centuries ago; their dome is still in use every day.

3What to look for

• The RUDAS lettering and the 19th-century façade that hides the Turkish bath.
• The hillside pressed against the building: that's where the hot water comes from.
• The steam that sometimes drifts from the building's vents on cold days.