Depths Of The City

Budapest has one of the largest cave systems to be found beneath any city. The thermal baths of the Hungarian metropolis derive their water from many natural springs, including this Molnár János cave. Want to explore a spectacular kilometre-long European cave without so much as a shiver? TOBIAS FRIEDRICH has dived it and took the pictures

- Tobias Friedrich

YOU CAN SMELL the sub-tropical heat and humidity. Everyone who enters the Molnár János notices it immediately. It increases with each step into the cave.

Once the sweat starts running down your back, you might wish you were wearing a swimsuit and flip-flops. The source of this extreme heat in the middle of Hungary’s capital city are the thermal springs that heat the highest water level of the flooded part of the cave to 28°C.

As impactful as the first steps into the cave are, the outside is unspectacular. The entrance is close to the Lukáz thermal bath, but there is no sign or advertising, just an old sliding gate behind which you find a small gravel parking area. You wouldn’t guess that it conceals one of the most incredible divespots in Europe.

Around an old store, reminiscent of a Turkish bath, a wooden walkway leads into a shaft to the cave, the entrance of which is about 100m into the Buda mountains.

Twin-sets and rebreathers are stacked on long metal tables. Dozens of stage-cylinders lie ready for use. Hundreds of drysuits hang drying.

Stern dark-brown eyes critically consider every newcomer. They belong to Attila Hosszú, whose bald head seems well-matched to his name. Hosszú secured the sole licence from the government to regulate dive operations in the cave, and he alone sets the rules.

Since a diver died in the cave some years ago for unexplained reasons, the government has forbidden any diving being carried out in an uncontrolled way. Hosszú has a number of parameters he has to observe and enforce.