Christmas in Budapest, and the thermal baths in the cold

Budapest is two cities facing each other across the Danube: Buda on its hills to the west, with the castle and the old town, and Pest on the flat land to the east, with the boulevards, the parliament and most of the life of the place. They were formally united, with Óbuda to the north, in 1873, and the bridges that join them are part of the city's character. At Christmas, with the river dark and the bridges lit, it is one of the most handsome cities in Europe.

It also has something few capitals can match: hot water coming out of the ground. Budapest sits on a geological fault line with many thermal springs. The Romans bathed here, the Ottomans built domed baths in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the Habsburg era added grand spa palaces. Hungarians still use them, all year round. In winter they are at their best.

The markets and the lights

Budapest's best-known Christmas market fills Vörösmarty tér, a square at the top of the main shopping street, with wooden stalls selling crafts, mulled wine and Hungarian food. Kürtőskalács, the chimney cake, is a spiral of sweet dough baked on a spit and rolled in sugar or cinnamon. Lángos is fried flatbread, usually eaten with sour cream and cheese, and best eaten hot from the pan. A second market sits in front of St Stephen's Basilica, the city's great domed church, where lights are projected onto the façade after dark.

December is cold, typically around freezing and sometimes well below. The Danube can carry ice in a hard winter. Dress for it.

The city is at its best seen from the river or from the Buda hills. The Parliament, a neo-Gothic building completed in the early twentieth century, stretches along the Pest embankment, and its long façade and central dome are one of the great riverside sights of Europe, especially when lit at night. The Chain Bridge, opened in 1849, was the first permanent bridge across the Danube here, designed by the English engineer William Tierney Clark and built under the direction of the Scot Adam Clark, no relation. From the terraces of the Fisherman's Bastion, beside the Matthias Church on Castle Hill, the view takes in the whole of Pest across the water.

The baths in the cold

The thermal baths are the reason to come in winter rather than in summer. Of the many in the city, two are particularly famous. Széchenyi, in the City Park, is a huge yellow neo-Baroque palace from the early twentieth century, built around outdoor pools of warm water. On a cold December day the steam rises off them into the frosty air, and bathers sit up to their shoulders in the warmth, some of them playing chess on floating boards, with snow on the balustrades around them. It is one of the great sights of Budapest, and joining in is easier than it looks.

Gellért, on the Buda side at the foot of Gellért Hill, is the Art Nouveau rival. It is a richly decorated building with mosaics, stained glass and a famous colonnaded indoor pool. Rudas, nearby, keeps an Ottoman domed pool from the sixteenth century. All of them have their own rules and customs, and it is worth reading up before you go and taking a swimming costume and flip-flops.

Out of the city

Just You's Christmas in Budapest, five nights, is for solo travellers and spends the season in the city, with excursions to two places nearby. Szentendre, on the Danube north of Budapest, is a small baroque town settled by Serbian refugees in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with Orthodox churches and a long tradition as an artists' colony. Gödöllő has the royal palace associated with Empress Elisabeth, the Habsburg empress known as Sisi, who loved Hungary and spent long periods there.

For another time of year, Travelsphere's Imperial Capitals, seven nights, links Budapest with Bratislava, Vienna, the medieval town of Český Krumlov and Prague, on the old routes between the cities of the Habsburg empire.

At Christmas, though, Budapest needs no partner. A market by day, a bath at dusk and dinner in a warm restaurant by the river make as good a winter day as Europe has to offer.