An Evening Soak at the Szechenyi Thermal Baths

Budapest sits atop a geological anomaly: the city is riddled with thermal springs, some as hot as 76 degrees Celsius, that have been used for bathing since at least the Roman occupation. The Szechenyi is the largest, grandest, and most extraordinary of the city's thermal bath complexes — a yellow neo-baroque palace in City Park, opened in 1913, with fifteen indoor pools, three outdoor pools, and steam rooms that make you question whether you have accidentally entered a Dostoevsky novel.

The outdoor pools are heated to 38 degrees year-round. In the main pool, elderly Hungarian men play chess on floating boards, their pieces moved between games with the unhurried authority of people who have been playing here every Tuesday for forty years. Steam rises from the water into the winter air. The water smells faintly of sulfur, which is to say it smells exactly as water this old and this geological should smell. A massage room, a cold plunge pool, and a sauna round out what is available.

The ritual observation: arrive at five in the afternoon when day-trippers have left and the regulars arrive. Buy a day ticket with locker access. Spend two hours alternating between the outdoor hot pool, the steam room, and the cold plunge. Shower. Walk across City Park to Vajdahunyad Castle, which is lit up at night. Take the Metro (line M1, the oldest underground railway in continental Europe) back into the centre and find a ruin bar in the Jewish Quarter for a palinka and a beer.