Senior Living: hidden gem in Budapest

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Recently a beautiful book arrived in the mail, sent by my relatives from Hungary. Titled Grand 150, it was published in 2023 to mark the 150th anniversary of the Grand Hotel, located on Margaret Island in the heart of the Hungarian capital Budapest.

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My relatives knew that the beautifully illustrated book, which chronicles the history of the Grand Hotel from its opening in 1873 to the present, would have great meaning to me. In fact, I could have been one of them, as my only stay at the hotel was in the early 1940s, when my parents and I spent a summer vacation there, not far from where we lived. Much later I spent my many holidays on the island at the Thermal Hotel next door, but I visited the Grand often.

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I fell in love with Margaret Island when I was a teenager. An oasis of greenery, parks, flowers and medicinal waters in the middle of Budapest, the island, 2.5 kilometers long and half a kilometer wide, is framed by the Danube River. Both the island and the bridge that connects it to the Pest and Buda sides of the city are named after Margaret, the daughter of King Bela IV of House Arpad.

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A word about St. Margaret. Born a princess in the 13th century, she became a Dominican nun to fulfill the promise of her father, King Bela IV, who sacrificed her in gratitude for Hungary’s survival of the Mongol hordes. Her short, holy life on the island merited her canonization in 1943. Her memory lives on in the ruins of the medieval Dominican church and cloister, which I often visited. Besides enjoying the beautiful surroundings, my visits to Margaret Island have a more mundane purpose: to take advantage of the revitalizing treatments available at the Ensana Thermal Spa Hotel. These treatments are based on the island’s mineral-rich waters, which are said to be valuable in the healing process of rheumatism and several other ailments of the joints and muscles.

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Drinking the water is said to be a good option for people who suffer from stomach problems. Refreshed in body and mind, I remember being ready to enjoy the rest of the day, maybe take a walk, sit on the patio enjoying a pastry or hop on the No. 26 bus to take me to the Pest side of the city. shopping on the Boulevard.

Although today’s Margaret Island is a hub of activity, welcoming visitors with two hotels, two swimming pools, an open-air theater and food stalls, it also has a rich and varied history.

In many ways, the island’s history parallels that of Hungary. It was already known in ancient times and became a hunting ground for kings with the arrival of the Magyars. During the Middle Ages, Dominican churches and monasteries were built. These were abandoned during the Turkish occupation of Hungary in the 16th and 17th centuries.

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The island entered a new era during the subsequent years of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The island’s hot springs, already known in Roman and medieval times, were further developed and a new bath center was opened in 1869. It could be reached by steamboat and then by horse-drawn carriages.

The opening of the bath center coincides with the opening of the subject of my book, the beautiful new Grand Hotel with 164 rooms. Access to the island became even easier in 1900 with the new Margaret Bridge. But disaster struck again when the island became a war zone during the siege of Budapest at the end of World War II, leaving the island in ruins and the bathing center destroyed. Yet the ‘Grand’ survived, reconstructed in its original elegance and connected by an underground passage to the new, modern Thermal Hotel that opened in 1979.

If you are in Budapest, be sure to visit the city’s hidden treasure, Margaret Island.

— Alice Lukacs writes the column Living in the 90s

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