Rudas Thermal Bath

Built in 1566, during the Ottoman occupation, and still working — which makes it one of the oldest continuously used buildings in Budapest.

The original Turkish bath is a single octagonal pool under a dome carried on eight pillars, with coloured glass set into the roof. At midday the light comes down through it in distinct coloured shafts, and that, rather than the water, is what people remember. Four smaller corner pools of graded temperature surround it, in the arrangement Ottoman bathhouses were built to across the empire.

The modern addition is a rooftop pool looking straight down the Danube toward Elisabeth Bridge — an odd pairing with a sixteenth-century interior, and an excellent one, particularly after dark when the bridges are lit.

One practical thing matters more here than at any other bath in the city: check the schedule before you go. Rudas still runs single-sex days for part of the week, mixed days for the rest, and the rooftop and swimming sections keep their own hours. More first-time visitors are caught out by this than by anything else in Budapest.

It sits at the Buda foot of Elisabeth Bridge, below Gellért Hill.