Budapest's cityscape and Liberty Statue. Photo / Getty Images
Anna Harrison enjoys Art Deco beauty and learns head nudity rules
It's always the first thing I want to know. Will I have to take my clothes off? Just thinking about visiting public baths in another country gives me a case of mild anxiety. So Budapest, the City of Spas,
is enough to give me a twitchy eye.
One of the most famous is on the banks of the Danube beside the green Liberty Bridge. The imposing, turn-of-the-century building is emblazoned with capped letters: Gellert. It gets its name and thermal waters from the hill behind, after the saint who was martyred there — apparently stuffed in a barrel and sent over the edge.
The entrance is on the hill side of the building, under a carved arch of naked bathers, half draped in limestone linens. Inside, it opens up to a grand hall, with Grecian goddesses lit up in recesses, and people waiting on red-cushioned pews under a stained-glass dome ceiling. In a slightly confusing entry system, you pay for a locker ticket or a bit more for a cabin to change in, and get a waterproof wristband to get past the turnstiles and to lock your cubicle. To my relief, Gellert is unisex and everyone in the changing rooms is wearing togs. Armed with Jandals and a rented bathrobe, I step out to try to find the main pool.
It was the Romans, those lovers of water, who first built baths in the area using thermal springs bubbling up from beneath. Then, as various peoples invaded Hungary over the centuries, the baths' popularity rose and fell accordingly. But there were two periods when they really flourished.
