Király Thermal Bath

This guide to Kiraly Thermal Bath in Budapest opens in 1565, when the Ottoman pasha of Buda, Arslan, received a silk cord from the sultan and broke ground on a bathhouse he would never see finished. It follows his successor Sokollu Mustafa Pasha, who had wooden pipes threaded underground to carry water from springs half a mile away so soldiers could bathe safely inside the town walls, and the star-shaped skylights still cut into the dome above the octagonal pool. You will hear how the bath changed hands after Buda fell to Christian forces, and how a German surname gave the building the name it carries today.