The cost of operating the famous thermal baths in Hungary due to rising energy prices in 2023 is expected to increase by 170% compared to last year, Budapest Spas, the company managing the capital's thermal baths, expects.
Prices for visiting historical baths in Hungary, which are mostly popular among foreign tourists, have already increased by more than 30%.
According to industry experts, despite the increase in tariffs, the attendance of thermal baths has almost returned to the level before the pandemic (42 million visitors in 2019).
The capital of Hungary is also the capital of its thermal resorts. There are 130 of them in Budapest.
The largest bath complex in Europe is named after Hungarian politician Istvan Szechenyi. The complex has three external and fifteen internal pools. Various types of therapy are available here, there is a day balneotherapy clinic.
80% of the underground territory of Hungary, which has become a kind of Mecca for lovers of thermal baths, is occupied by thermal waters. This explains the large number of thermal resorts and hot healing springs – there are over 1300 of them in the country.
Their first users were still Celts. The Romans who succeeded them founded on the territory of modern Hungary the Roman province of Pannonia with its capital Aquincum. The city housed numerous baths in which Roman legionaries healed their wounds.
In the Middle Ages Aquincum changed its name to Obuda, and then gradually merged with nearby Buda and Pest and turned into Budapest.