(17 Aug 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Budapest, Hungary – 16 August 2025
1. Tracking shot of Cecília Lohász going into the water
2. Various of people enjoying the new public Danube beach
3. SOUNDBITE (Hungarian) Cecília Lohász, manager of the City and River Association (Valyo):
++PARTLY OVERLAID++
"In 1973, bathing in the Danube was fully banned throughout the entire section of the river in Budapest. And a general ban was in force that bathing in the Danube was prohibited everywhere.”
4. SOUNDBITE (Hungarian) Cecília Lohász, manager of the City and River Association (Valyo):
++PARTLY OVERLAID++
"At the beginning of the 20th century, there were nine functioning Danube baths in the city center. That was a long time ago. Since 2010, our organisation has always hoped that we could bathe in the Danube again. But before, the water quality of the river was not good at all. A decade and a half passed, and we kept this topic alive.”
5. Woman coming out of the water
6. Public beach shot from water
7. Mid of children playing on the shore
8. Women standing on the shore
9. SOUNDBITE (Hungarian) Cecília Lohász, manager of the City and River Association (Valyo):
++PARTLY OVERLAID++
"We’d like to go further, and in the long term we want to reach the state that it was before, having 5-10 baths operating on the city section of the Danube.”
10. Tilt up to the Hungarian Parliament building on the bank of the Danube
STORYLINE:
After decades of prohibition, residents of the Hungarian capital can legally swim again in the Danube.
Until now, locals could only enjoy a refreshing swim in the summer heat outside the administrative binderies of Budapest.
But now in one of the southern districts of the city, on a once-abandoned stretch of the Danube riverbank, a legal beach has been created on a trial basis as a joint initiative of a civic group and the city administration.
"Our organisation has always hoped that we could bathe in the Danube again. But before, the water quality of the river was not good at all. We kept this topic alive,” said Cecília Lohász, manager of the City and River Association (Valyo).
The new beach, an approximately 15-meter long and two-meter wide strip surrounded by red and white buoys, is currently the result of the improving water quality.
"Opening a public beach is complicated process because there is no legislation at the moment and there is no legal framework that makes it clear how it can be allowed,” Lohász said.
On the seemingly endless banks of the Danube, this tiny, designated bathing area may seem laughable at first, but activists hope that within a year or two, new beaches will follow this test project closer to the downtown section of the Danube.
"In 1973, bathing in the Danube was fully banned throughout the entire section of the river in Budapest. And a general ban was in force that bathing in the Danube was prohibited everywhere” Lohász said about the past.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, several beaches along the Danube in Budapest were fenced off from the river where people could swim in the summer heat.
These places were also important venues for social life.
After World War II, excessive environmental pollution resulting from the development of the city slowly made the section of the Danube in the Hungarian capital unsuitable for bathing.
As water quality has significantly improved, activists and the city administration aim to make Budapest a city of bathing on the Danube once again.
AP Video shot by Bela Szandelszky
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