Hullámfürdő

The Hullámfürdő lies in the middle of Pécs, on the line of the main road that crosses the Baranya county seat, and its name comes from the wave machine installed in the open-air pool. Bathing on the site goes back to the end of the nineteenth century, when a bath named after the old Ráth Street stood here; a modern summer lido replaced it in 1926, and in 1935 the rebuilt Maléter bath was inaugurated as the Hullámfürdő, the third strand in Hungary to be fitted with wave machinery. The original mechanism pressed water out of two chambers below the surface with alternating metal plates, and the principle survives even though the machine does not: the operator states that waves of 130 cm are raised every hour. A 33 m swimming pool stands beside the wave basin.

Around the water there is more than eight thousand square metres of tended lawn, a shaded family park with wooden play equipment, a swing, a sandpit and a slide, a recently built beach volleyball court, and a buffet open daily 09:00–19:00, also to visitors who are not bathing. The complex draws no mains drinking water: the operator, the municipal sports company PSN Zrt., reports that the site's average daily requirement of around 220 cubic metres comes from its own wells. In summer 2026, energy-saving measures cut electricity use by more than 26,000 kilowatt-hours against the same period a year earlier.

The indoor half of the complex is the Abay Nemes Oszkár competition pool, finished in November 1997 on the footprint of an earlier tent-covered basin. It is a 50 m, eight-lane, deck-level pool, kept at 27 °C and completely refreshed every four hours; alongside it a filtered teaching pool at 30 °C is used for swimming lessons and baby swimming. A medical wing branded Aktív Hullám offers physiotherapy, pulsed magnetic therapy, medicinal tub treatments including underwater jet massage and carbonated baths, mud and medicinal packs, massage, electrotherapy and light therapy, with a rheumatologist consulting on site. A wellness section with sauna, solarium and infrared cabin was added from 1995, but the saunas have been switched off since 4 August 2026 under government energy-saving requirements, with no reopening date announced.