Hévíz

People were drawn to the warm water long before the town existed. The first archaeological evidence goes back about 7,500 years; the Romans built villas here, left an altar stone to Jupiter and cemeteries, and used the lake to make leather, and Germanic and Slav peoples of the Migration Period used it too. The name Hévíz, meaning "hot water", first appears in a document of 1328. During the Ottoman period the water level rose and the area became swampy and hard to reach.

In 1731 the scholar Matthias Bel first mentioned cures at the lake, and in 1769 the county physician Ferenc Szláby described its water for Queen Maria Theresa. The Festetics family acquired the lake in the mid-18th century, and between 1795 and 1797 Count György Festetics built a wooden bath house on a float over the outflow. Development stalled after his death in 1819 and resumed in 1868 under György Festetics II. From 1905 the Keszthely brewery owner Vencel Reischl leased the bath for 35 years, rebuilt the hotels and restaurants and completed a new entrance in 1911, and doctors and therapies multiplied.

The modern town was formed in 1946 by joining Hévízszentandrás and Egregy, and became a town on 1 May 1992. Large hotels arrived from 1975. In the 1980s bauxite mining lowered the region's karst water and the spring's flow fell sharply, but it recovered after the mines closed.

Life in Hévíz revolves around the lake. Bathers float in the warm water through all four seasons, and in winter a mist forms over the surface. The water lilies, introduced by Sándor Lovassy in 1898, are as much a symbol of the town as the pavilion bath, and bacteria are the lake's dominant life form, alongside blue-green and green algae.

Medicine is part of the culture too. The lake's water and the mud of its peat bed, up to 8 metres thick, are used to treat rheumatic and locomotor disorders at the St Andrew's hospital and in the hotels, and Hévíz belongs to Hungary's national association of spa towns. A legend tells of a nurse whose prayer made the Virgin release a healing spring for a sick child.

The town is unusually international for its size. In 2012 Germany, Russia and Austria supplied the most guests, and many visitors come for treatment. Egregy keeps a village identity, with its Árpád-era church, wine bars and grape-harvest celebration, and the calendar includes a carnival fair and a wine festival.

Hévíz is small: its 830 hectares make it the smallest town by area in Zala county and in Transdanubia. It lies about 7 km north-west of the centre of Keszthely and 35 km east of the county town, Zalaegerszeg. Residents live in the streets around the centre and in the hillside district of Egregy, and tourism is the mainstay of the town's economy.

The figures are striking for a town of its size. In 2012 it recorded one million guest nights in commercial accommodation, second in Hungary only to Budapest, and hundreds of thousands of visitors come every year to a resort with more than 200 years of bathing tradition. Hotels, the hospital, treatment centres, restaurants and shops provide most of the work.

Because the lake never closes, the town has less of the summer-only rhythm of the Balaton resorts. Regional plans have long discussed a tram link with Keszthely, and a new bus station opened in 2021.

Hévíz eats from the Hungarian table, with menus shaped by its many foreign guests. Restaurants serve the national classics: gulyás, properly a brothy soup of beef, potato and paprika; pörkölt, the thicker stew; halászlé, the hot fisherman's soup with rival regional versions; palacsinta, pancakes both sweet and savoury; and lángos, the deep-fried flatbread whose name comes from láng, the Hungarian word for flame.

The district of Egregy is the place to eat and drink like a local. Behind its 13th-century church, vineyards climb the slope and small wine bars pour local wines, and its restaurants offer home-style cooking. Olaszrizling, the most widespread variety in Hungary, is grown around Lake Balaton, and a wine festival and the grape harvest are the high points of the year.

In the centre, cafés and pastry shops line the promenade and pedestrian zone, and the farmers' market sells local produce. Nearby Keszthely, the lake's second-largest town, adds more restaurants and lakeside buffets.