Balfi Gyógyfürdő: A Historical Spa Oasis Near Sopron

Balf sits about seven kilometres out from Sopron, and its sulphurous springs were being piped and bathed in around AD 180. Excavators found the Roman work still in the ground: the oak channel that carried the hot water out, a tank, and the pipe that drained it.

The bath is part of a rehabilitation hospital today, which gives it a slightly institutional face and puts off a lot of people who would enjoy it. They should not be put off. The bathing wing sells tickets, and on the right day of the week anyone can walk in.

Photo: Dguendel, CC BY 3.0. The covered mineral spring fountain in Balf, the village 7 km outside Sopron that gives the spa its name.

Who Can Actually Get In

Balfi Gyógyfürdő is the bathing wing of the Soproni Erzsébet Oktató Kórház és Rehabilitációs Intézet, the Sopron teaching hospital and rehabilitation institute, which took the site over in 2013. The 160 beds upstairs are for musculoskeletal patients admitted with a doctor’s referral, and the waiting list for those runs long.

The bath itself is a different question. It has a cash desk, published bathing hours, and a standing note asking weekend visitors to buy their tickets during the week, because the desk does not open on Saturday or Sunday. Outpatient treatment courses run here too, twice a year on the state health insurance for anyone covered by it.

Section	Days	Hours
Swimming pool	Tuesday to Friday	07:00 to 15:00
Swimming pool	Saturday	08:00 to 12:00
Therapeutic pool	Monday to Friday	07:00 to 15:00
Therapeutic pool	Saturday and Sunday	08:00 to 16:00
Cash desk	Monday to Friday	07:00 to 14:00

Read the pool row twice before you plan a Monday. The swimming pool is the one that closes at the start of the week, and the whole bathing wing shuts by mid afternoon, which is the opposite rhythm to the thermal baths in Budapest.

The Water

Three wells were drilled on the site in 1973 and 1974 and named after the older springs: Fekete, Silvanus and Farkasd. Four wells now hold the medicinal-water certificate, Fekete, Silvanus and Farkasd I and II. The Fekete wellhead stands beside the Nyulas Ferenc promenade, the other two inside the English park. The sulphurous water was declared a medicinal water in 1975.

What the hospital uses it for is rehabilitation: musculoskeletal, orthopaedic and neurological cases, with rheumatology and osteoporosis clinics attached. The physiotherapy department that works alongside the pools runs low, medium and high frequency equipment, ultrasound and magnetotherapy, paraffin packs, TENS and traction.

There is a second, older use that costs nothing. Balf water is a naturally fizzy calcium-magnesium-bicarbonate water, taken as a drinking cure for stomach, bowel and kidney function, and bottling started here in 1900. The public drinking fountain in front of the bottling plant is an eosin-glazed Zsolnay piece by the ceramicist Győző Takács, put up in 2008, with a Fertő wildlife frieze around the base. Anyone can drink from it.

Inside the Bathing Wing

The bath space holds a 28 degree swimming pool and a 34 degree therapeutic pool. The wellness corner has a six person jacuzzi, a single bubble bath, a carbonated-sulphurous tub bath, an aromatic oil tub bath and underwater jet massage. The 2004 extension added a Kneipp hydrotherapy section with a treading pool, a four chamber contrast bath and a variable temperature Kneipp affusion.

The castle hotel next door is the old baroque inn, a three star house with 44 beds, antique furniture and a glazed corridor straight through to the bath, which is the detail that matters in February.

Eight Centuries of Paperwork

Balf appears in a charter in 1199 as Farkasd, and as Wolf in 1278. The German name Wolfs stuck for centuries, which is why the parish took Saint Wolfgang, Szent Farkas in Hungarian, as its patron.

The modern bath starts in 1560, when Ferdinand I gave Sopron’s council the right to use the hot water at Balf against illness, buy the equipment, put up bathhouses, and charge the bathers for it. That last clause made Balf the first bath in the country licensed to take an entrance fee. The accounts show it running from 23 May that year, seasonally, through the warm months. It expanded fast: 52 tubs by 1566, eight bath buildings by 1588, and in 1592 the Sopron magistrate set one tariff covering both the town bath and Balf.

The drinking cure and the baroque guest inn arrived in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in 1773 the city built the bath chapel. The railway did the rest in the nineteenth century. The Wosinski family bought the spa in 1913, drilled new wells, and ran it as a full resort with a sanatorium, electric light, a music hall and a tennis court until the war and then nationalisation ended that. The six storey, 650 bed spa hospital that dominates the site now was designed by Attila Kun and opened in 1975.

What Else Is In Balf

The park around the hospital is an eight hectare English landscape garden with old trees, a stream, stone bridges and a scattering of eighteenth and nineteenth century statuary, including a Piéta from 1706 and an Immaculata from the 1840s in front of the chapel.

Szent József bath chapel. Built by the city of Sopron in 1773 so that bathers could pray for a recovery and give thanks for one, with Sopron’s coat of arms over the door. The rococo altar is the work of the Sopron stone carver Antal Sedlmayer; the ceiling frescoes are by István Dorfmeister the elder, and show Christ healing the sick by the water. It stayed in Wosinski hands after the spa was nationalised and was restored in 2009 by a great grandson of the last private owner.

Szerb Antal National Memorial. The hardest thing in Balf, and the reason to slow down. In 1944 a forced labour camp was set up here to build the border defence line, with the SS and the Gestapo quartered in the spa buildings themselves and two thousand prisoners held in stables and barns. Antal Szerb, the novelist and literary historian who wrote Journey by Moonlight and The Pendragon Legend, was beaten to death in that camp on 27 January 1945, aged 43. The poet György Sárközi and the critic Gábor Halász died here too. The memorial standing on the church hill today, marble figures in a forced march with each victim’s camp number, is the work of the sculptor László Kutas and the architect Barnabás Winkler and was unveiled in 2008.

Szent Farkas fortified church. Fifteenth century, on the vineyard hill above the village, walled with loopholes during the Ottoman wars. The keystone over the gate is dated 1653. The Turkish army wrecked it anyway on the way to Vienna in 1686. The Wosinski crypt is inside.

Nyulas Ferenc promenade. A shaded walk with the Fekete wellhead on it, and a set of gentle exercise stations laid out along it for people mid course at the hospital.

If You Want A Longer Swim

Balf’s bathing hours are short, and the pools are small. For a full day in the water, Lővér Uszoda in Sopron itself, in a pine forest park on the Lővér ring, is the better call. It is not a thermal bath, it is a proper swimming complex, and it is open far longer.

Section	Days	Hours
Indoor pool	Monday to Friday	05:30 to 21:00
Indoor pool	Saturday and Sunday	08:00 to 20:00
Sauna and wellness	Wednesday and Friday	10:00 to 20:30
Sauna and wellness	Saturday and Sunday	10:00 to 19:30
Outdoor lido	13 June to 31 August	09:00 to 20:30 daily

The wellness area has two Finnish saunas, a steam bath, a plunge pool at 12 to 16 degrees, plus a relaxation pool and a jacuzzi on the pool deck. The outdoor half has four pools, slides and a beach volleyball court, and parking is free. Note the sauna days: it is shut on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, which catches people out. City bus 1 runs there from the centre, bus 2 comes back.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a tourist bathe at Balfi Gyógyfürdő?

Yes. The bathing wing sells tickets to outside visitors. The swimming pool is open Tuesday to Friday and Saturday morning, the therapeutic pool every day, and the cash desk works weekdays only, so buy a weekend ticket in advance.

Can you drink the Balf water?

The Zsolnay drinking fountain in front of the bottling plant is free and public, and the same water is sold bottled across Hungary. It is taken as a drinking cure for stomach, bowel and kidney function.

How do I get to Balf from Sopron?

Balf is about 7 km out and is part of Sopron, reachable by car or by bus to the spa centre stop, which was rebuilt along with the rest of the village core.

Is it worth going if I am not having treatment?

Yes, but plan the day around the short bathing hours and give yourself an hour for the park, the chapel and the memorial on the hill. If you want a long swim and a sauna afterwards, do the bathing at Lővér in town instead. To place Balf among the other countryside baths, our roundup of the big thermal baths outside Budapest covers the rest of the country.

Sources: Soproni Gyógyközpont (Soproni Erzsébet Oktató Kórház és Rehabilitációs Intézet) own site for the bathing hours, cash desk and rehabilitation services, read 5 September 2026; Lővér Uszoda’s own site for its hours, wellness and lido season, read 5 September 2026; the Sopron spa-town heritage trail for the wells, the chapel, the park, the Zsolnay fountain, the fortified church and the Szerb Antal memorial; Katalin Kincses, “A soproni fürdők a kora újkorban” (Aetas, 1997) for the Roman finds, the 1199 and 1278 charters and the 1560 licence.