Szechenyi Spa Baths in Budapest is one of the best and largest spa baths in Europe with its 15 indoor baths and 3 grand outdoor pools. Come and visit our beloved baths.
Szechenyi Baths & Pool: Fun Place, Fine Palace
Szechenyi Baths (built in 1913) is the most visited and much praised attraction in Budapest: relaxing, fun, affordable and, at night, romantic. In addition to the marvelous medicinal natural hot spring waters in the 18 pools, there are 10 saunas / steam cabins, several massage therapies, facial treatments, and more.
30 Min Massage in Szechenyi Bath + Bath Ticket: € 34.61Book now. |
Szechenyi Baths outdoor pools – photo by Alvaro Jenik
Szechenyi Spa Baths is in the biggest green park of Budapest, in the City Park, close to a bunch of Budapest attractions. The Neo-baroque palace was specifically built for hosting Szechenyi Baths as Hungary has been the country of baths (and Budapest the City of Baths) for many centuries: starting with the Roman settlers who built the first spa baths, through the 16th century Turkish occupiers who built many of the famous and revived Turkish baths in Budapest to the 19-20th century natural medical trends that promote aqua therapies and their deeply beneficial effects. The beautiful building of the spa baths is the design of Gyozo Czigler (Győző Czigler) who started to build Szechenyi Furdo in May 1909.
Come and enjoy your time in Budapest in Szechenyi Spa Baths, in a beautiful, richly decorated palace. The perfect place to chill out, to get to know locals, make business deals and fall in love.
Szechenyi Spa Baths on Budapest Tourist Map
I visited these baths yesterday, and not knowing more, accepted the answer at the ticket desk, where I was told I needed a doctors note to visit the mineral baths. Later, my massage therapist said this was not so. A pleasant visit but sorry I missed those pools.
The towel rental deposit was high (fl.4,600), many people were not able to bathe because they did not have the cash with them.
Just two toilet cubicles for the women in the main changing room!! Needed cleaning.
Hi Sally, we are sorry to hear about your inefficient communication with the cashier, it must have been a misunderstanding.
There is one entrance only for hospital patients and 3 of the 18 pools are actually only for hospital patients, but none of these are called ‘mineral pool’ specifically, so we are quite surprised what may have caused the miscommunication, and are truly sorry again, that you have been misinformed (the day care hospital pools are the special hospital gym, special aqua fitness pool for the day care patients, and on weekdays, the weight bath (sulyfurdo). These pools are indicated in green color on our map here http://szechenyispabaths.com/map/
All the 15 mineral pools in blue color, are absolutely open for all of the visitors, and if by mineral you meant the natural spring waters containing lots of minerals, yes, they are mineral pools, and definitely open to all.
Most spa pools inside can be visited until 7pm in the evenings, while the outdoor pools are open until late night at 10pm. We apologize again. The staff of Szechenyi Baths is regularly taking part in special trainings, and there is a great emphasis on improving the communication with foreign bath guests (who are learning English to better understand needs and questions). We have seen a lot of improvements in the reviews about Szechenyi Baths, but it seems that we still have some scope to improve. We sincerely hope that you will be able to visit the thermal bath and its famous mineral pools again to get the most of your spa bath experience.
Towel rentals at Szechenyi Baths
Admittedly, the towel deposit fee is relatively high but only for bigger towels. Being a huge bath complex, we have had problems with towels rented out and forgotten by some bath guests. With over a million guests per year, there have been too many towels taken away from Szechenyi Baths, but the higher deposit price has helped to keep these numbers low. We are sorry that you have found the deposit too expensive. The deposit is of course fully returned to the guests (HUF 1,300 is the deposit for small towels, while for big towels HUF 4,000 is approx. 15 Euro, which has not been a problem for most guests borrowing towels). There are also many ATMs in Budapest, and the ticket cashier of Szechenyi Furdo accepts major bank cards and credit cards too. So if you are planning to rent a towel at Szechenyi Bath and let the cashier know about it, you can pay for your rented towel easily by card too. We are working on improving our facilities and services, so thank you for your feedback, we will look into the towel rental settings and amounts for a revision.
As for the toilets, we are striving hard to keep them clean all day through with the thousands of guests. Again, please accept our apologies. The building is historical and we both need to preserve its original structures and modernize it with care.
Thank you for your valuable feedback about Szechenyi Bath and we are hoping to welcome you again at the mineral pools, with better experience.
We went today and found all the staff very helpful. The cafe was good value for money clean and tidy. The only problem was we were unable to rent robes or book a pedicure. We were told it was shut!
Showers were clean however the shower was a little useless.
All of that we had a good day and returned back to our apartment tired. Would definitely go again.
Hello Wendy, thank you for visiting the Szechenyi bath, we are very happy to get such positive reviews.
Could you please let me know when you tried to book a pedicure in Szechenyi thermal bath, and when you wished to rent a bath robe.
After 7 pm most of the bath facilities shut down in the spa, and only the three outdoor pools keep staying open (no massage services, no saunas after 7pm, so I was wondering if your time of visit was after 7pm).
Thank you for your time to give feedback. We will try to improve our information base about Szechenyi Baths.
And do come back again! :)
If you do not have your own towels, do not even try to visit this bath. It took us half an hour to find the women responsible for renting towels, just to listen to her hysterical screaming “no towels, no towels!!!” . The Szechenyi Bath has no towels for tourists, or they have some which are not washed and dried on time for people arriving afternoon as we did.
Anyway, we had to use our own underwear as a towel, and then put on the coat, go out to the -4C outside temperature and take the metro to our hotel. It was the most terrible and traumatic experience of our recent stay in Budapest.
Hello Rachel, we apologize for the inconvenience caused by the staff of Szechenyi Baths when renting your towel. Please accept our sincere apologies for your ordeal. We will look into the matter asap. Szechenyi Baths is well prepared with towels for rent throughout the year (in summer there are hundreds of thousands of bath guests, many of whom have no towels with them), so it must have been some hiccup or misunderstanding that there were no towels available at the time of your visit (in the low season of the baths). At any rate, we are sorry about the unacceptable behavior the employee of the Szechenyi Furdo demonstrated. All the staff has been participating in customer service management skills in the last few years, and we have been working hard to raise the standards.
We have forwarded your feedback on Széchenyi Bath to the customer service, (email szechenyi@spabudapest.hu) to have a closer look at what may have happened.
Hello, first of all, the baths were excellent, although very crowded, and the staff were most helpful in finding my lost bathing costume! We had cash, but not enough cash for the bath sheets (there were “no towels” at 15.00 hrs on Saturday 29th either) and so what would be a good idea is to have a sign up at the front entrance cashier with the towel prices because then we could have done what you suggest and paid on our card. Fortunately we had extra layers of clothes that made drying ourselves no problem and the hairdryers are excellent.
Dear Mrs Archer, first of all thank you for your wise comment on Szechenyi Baths, and advice. Also, we are sorry that you had to use your clothes for drying.
This was the first winter season in Szechenyi Baths in 2012 that the bath reached its absolute full capacity in December and on Jan 1 2013, most probably due to the Christmas holidays, the New Year breaks, and the Cinetrip bath party too. We are truly sorry that you had to be resourceful rather than feel convenient with a good towel. Once the towels run out, guests can always rent simple clean bath sheets used for drying. As for your recommendation about better communication of prices, rentals, etc.: this is exactly what was the conclusion of the management of Szechenyi Bath, and hopefully the signs for rentals, towel rentals will be clearer in the future before guests enter the bathing areas. Currently the guests of the spa baths can see the general information on the cashier glass cubicles that there is only cash payment at the cashiers, but you are right, this is not enough information for future bath guests who also wish to rent a towel inside, and only realize at the towel rental counter that the deposit is too high.
Another last resort option is to buy a towel at the ’boutique’ of Szechenyi Baths at the main entrance (opposite the National Circus of Budapest).
Ideally the stock of towels of Széchenyi Furdo will be increased in the future… Happy New Year to You!
This place is so fabulous and all the staff were amazing! Just bring flip flops and a swimming cap if you want to do laps in the pool. I had neither but still had a blast! Thank you for an amazing experience! My towel froze while I was swimming but it was more funny than annoying. I would go everyday if I could!
Hello,
We are group of student from United kingdom who visiting Budapest and your spa for first time in 19 March 2013. I am very excited for my spa day. We have been told that we are allowed to use the facility because it is part of the deal with the our hotel, but if we like to have a treatment we should book that separately and pay for it. I booked the massage in your spa online for price of 16.00 Euro. I will bring my payment receipt to show to the reception desk. I would like to book myself for facial with Aida beauty salon in advance to confirm my treatment in that day but I do not know how to do it online!!! as it was not any booking option available for the salon. Also I would like to have my massage at 11:00 am. how can I confirm my treatment for that time!!!
Please help me
Many thanks
Sadena Piroozram
Hello Sadena, normally we only accept orders online for massage and bath ticket combined. As you already have a bath ticket arranged, we have managed to rearrange your order, and book a massage treatment for you.
Please note that this is normally not the case in Szechenyi Bath, as most visitors do not have a bath ticket bought separately. We will refund the price difference of the bath ticket (the one you purchased) and the price of the half an hour massage on the spot at our VIP Help desk (I have sent you the details via email, just wished to update this comment which is seen by other guests too).
This is the previous comment now updated with the info above:
I am sorry to say that you may have misinterpreted the available options for purchasing tickets and services online at Szechenyi Bath. If your bath ticket is arranged in your hotel book deal, it would not be wise to buy another bath ticket from us, which you just did. The order form says 1 Ticket w/ Cabin, SzB €18.46, which means 1 Ticket (bath ticket) and not 1 massage. Unfortunately, all of our online massage packages are literally packages, they include the bath ticket price too, where the cheapest massage value is of about 16 Euros ( Massage 30m & Ticket w/ Cabin SzB €34.61 on the order form). This means that at this moment, unfortunately, you cannot buy your massage only via internet, you need to buy the bath entry too, which is typically the case.
UPDATED INFO ABOVE: as you already possess your bath entry ticket, we will arrange you the massage in the bath, but you will need to bring along your bath ticket which you say you have. We will also refund the extra price you paid for the bath ticket (2 Euros) rather than the price of the 30 min massage.
As for AIDA Beauty Salon booking: Aida Beauty Salon rents the room from Szechenyi Bath, but does not belong to the Bath official treatments, or services. The services are provided by them, are not by Szechenyi Bath, Szechenyi simply shares the building with the salon as the host / landlord. We are working on making online booking available for all external services at Szechenyi Bath, from facials to pedicure or Thai massage, but presently, it is not possible yet.
We are glad to see that you are excited about the spa day, and we wish you a great holiday in Budapest.
We are looking forward to your email to arrange a suitable date and hour for your bath massage in Szechenyi thermal bath.
I am also sending this info to the email you have given in your comment (not shared with others).
Our family have just come back from a day at the baths. Thank you for a wonderful experience. We found helpful hosts everywhere ready to explain in English. We found your old baths modernized with great piety for the history (“lift” engraved in wall, washing section for feet around pool etc). We had a great lunch at your büfe without having to change and much more. All in all we wish to come back next time in Budapest.
Hello Kirsti, thank you for your kind words about Szechenyi Baths, you are very welcome to come back any time ! We are very glad that you and your family had a great time in Budapest.