Gellért Hill & The Thermal Springs: The Spa Capital of Europe

Why is it significant?

Stand before the palatial Art Nouveau facade of the Gellért Hotel and Baths at the southern base of Gellért Hill, where steam drifts from natural thermal vents.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand before the palatial Art Nouveau facade of the Gellért Hotel and Baths at the southern base of Gellért Hill, where steam drifts from natural thermal vents. Budapest is the only capital city in the world blessed with over one hundred and twenty natural hot mineral springs, gushing seventy million liters of healing thermal water every single day.

Step into the grand thermal hall to marvel at the soaring glass skylights, turquoise majolica tile mosaics, and marble colonnades. Opened in nineteen eighteen during the final months of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gellért's outdoor wave pool was the very first mechanized wave pool in the world, generating artificial ocean swells since nineteen twenty-seven.

The hill above was named for Saint Gerard, a Venetian bishop invited by King Saint Stephen to convert the Magyars, who was martyred in ten forty-six by pagan rebels who rolled him down the rocky cliffs in a spiked wooden barrel directly into the Danube.

Gaze out across the twilight river as the city lights reflect off the water. You have walked through the imperial majesty, secret vaults, and timeless waters of Budapest.