This European city is loved for its thermal baths. Dip into these five - The Times

I once spent a morning in a steamy Budapest bathhouse doing a magazine photoshoot. Mercifully for the other bathers, I wasn’t the one modelling tight polyester trunks. Instead, a troop of local nans and grandpas had agreed to showcase the latest high street headwear in time for winter. There they bobbed — in a Canada Goose trapper hat, a Roxy rhubarb beanie, a Patagonia bobble hat — as thick vapours wisped from the healing outdoor pools. What struck me was how remarkably healthy, happy and relaxed they all looked. If this was the daily morning routine of Budapest pensioners, I couldn’t have been more envious. Marble halls, hot stone massages, daydream-blue waters — pure, sultry, luxurious bliss.

If you didn’t know already, Budapest is the undisputed bathing capital of Europe, and you simply can’t visit without getting wrinkly. Built on a geothermal fault line, the city on the Danube draws on 123 hot springs and drilled wells that pump out 70 million litres of mineral-rich water a day at temperatures of 78C — that’s the same as your morning cuppa.

Over the centuries waves of empires — the Romans (who aptly named the settlement Aquincum), the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians (who added a grand flourish of imperial architecture) — tapped into this underground waterbed, giving rise to a series of bathhouses that are now the stuff of legend. Each has its own personality, and every local has their favourite.

These are my picks of the best thermal baths in Budapest.

Imagine Buckingham Palace with the taps left running — a grand, sunken water palace of domes, columns and buttery-yellow façades amid the leafy expanse of City Park in Pest, on the eastern bank of the Danube. Opened in 1913, it was the first thermal bath complex on this side of the river. It remains the largest bathhouse in Budapest — and my favourite, not least because of that rather silly photoshoot.

Your admission ticket unlocks a wedding-cake confection of waltzing neo-baroque and Renaissance architecture — a labyrinth of vaulted arches and pillars under imperial cupolas. All together there are eighteen pools (three outdoor), ten saunas and a multitude of steam rooms, operating as a social hotspot and a serious medical clinic. So unless you’re here for a prescribed course of balneotherapy (soaking in silica, sulphates, calcium and magnesium, basically), I’d ignore the scowling Carry On matrons and pad straight outdoors to the main event.

The open air offers immediate relief from the eggy whiff of the mineral springs, with each of the three pools here fitting a different mood. You’ll usually find me floating in the hottest, happily broiling in 38C waters, while getting soundly defeated in a game of chess with an elderly master on one of the pool’s boards. Be warned: you will lose (day ticket with locker from £30, over-14s only; szechenyibath.hu).

This bathhouse is best understood through its geography and history. It peers out on to the Danube from Buda, on the west bank, hunkered below Gellert Hill as though shouldering the weight of the Habsburg-era Citadella fortress above. It is also one of the city’s best surviving examples of an Ottoman-era bathhouse, established by the Turks around 1550 and expanded by the ambitious 16th-century statesman Sokollu Mustafa Pasha, whose fingerprints are all over the city’s thermal baths, including Kiraly (closed for renovation at present) and Rac.

I love the spectrum of temperatures in the Turkish thermal baths here — a sliding scale from 16C to a muscle-melting 42C in the octagonal centrepiece pool, where you can pose like a pasha beneath a classic domed ceiling. More than that, I’d recommend the newer 36C panoramic rooftop pool, from where you have a front-row view of Danube cruisers and sunsets as gammon-pink as your flushed skin. A cold hose-down afterwards never felt so good (day ticket with locker from £28, over-14s only; rudasfurdo.hu).

Another artistic statement further north on the Buda side, these baths are awash with eye-candy outdoor pools, but only once you get past the imposing barred windows and plain façade. The thermal waters here were used in the 12th century by the Knights of the Order of St John, apparently, and later provided restorative soakings for Hungarian state bureaucrats. Today tourists take pride of place in its outdoor pools. The more time you spend here the more you appreciate its theme park-lite lazy river, bubble beds and neck showers (day ticket from £16, over-14s only; lukacsfurdo.hu).

It’s no accident that this lido on Margaret Island, in the midriff of the Danube, is a place to which locals return year-round. I love a pool with a holiday vibe and Palatinus has a gorgeous slab of tiled blue where you can steam while sitting at 36C, as well as cold and hot plunge pools and a monster medicinal pool indoors. Looks-wise it’s all Bauhaus architecture from a century ago, and I’d recommend going in winter — when the sky grows lighter, the outdoor wave, fountain and kids’ pools reopen and become crèche-like with their flood of floaties (day ticket from £9; palatinusstrand.hu).

You’ll have to skip the extravagant rococo orchestration of Gellert Thermal Bath (sadly, that experience is on hold until the bathhouse reopens in 2028; I’ll always remember paddling in its main marble pool). But don’t sweat it: the historic Veli Bej Bath is equally quintessential. It’s an offbeat, Ottoman-era huddle of pools and saunas dating from 1574 and of the seductive sort seen in Bond films. Its octagonal thermal pool is a great place to break down barriers with locals — the chances are you’ll be the only foreigner there (day ticket from £13, over-14s only; Arpad fejedelem utja 7).

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The Corinthia Budapest is the sort of hotel you don’t need to leave to have a world-class splash. Its art deco wellness area has entered the city’s mythology, dating from 1886 and with a 15m lap pool — lie back and appreciate the splendour of its glass-roofed atrium. Apparently the hotel also inspired Wes Anderson, who visited to research the hotel archives before shooting The Grand Budapest Hotel (room-only doubles from £135).

A short walk north from the Lukacs bathhouse, the budget-friendly Hotel Csaszar promises two for the price of one. It’s a comfy, well-connected place to stay with access to three pools, including an Olympic-sized outdoor heated rectangle of blue. But the clincher? The Veli Bej bathhouse is behind the hotel (room-only doubles from £68).

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