Cool yourself in the City Park

2024/07/01 Actualities

The heatwave is here, concrete is virtually burning, and you don’t know how to refresh yourself in the urban jungle? The City Park offers many places with water and attractions for even the hottest summer days. Water is our shared treasure and a life-sustaining element, and here in the Liget we look after it and place it at the service of visitors: you can have access to water and refresh yourself whether you arrive here to do sport, spend time with your family or attend a cultural event.

Even the sight of water feels nice in this heat. The Liget has beautiful fountains: just think of the ornamental Zsolnay fountain in the centre of the Rose Garden at the House of the Hungarian Millennium, which matches this part of the park perfectly and evokes the Golden Age of Budapest. If you are in favour of more modern fountains, you will not be disappointed either since you can find them in the City Park too: a musical fountain is installed in the central section of the promenade, on its side closer to Ajtósi Dürer Road. You can see spectacular light concerts here, which start according to a timetable.

No bathing is allowed in any of the fountains, and the same applied to one of the most emblematic attractions of the park, the City Park Lake, which has been thoroughly cleaned, along with the moat, and its annual maintenance is now complete. Now, it has water in it and is suitable for boating. Thanks to the developments of the Liget Budapest Project, the lake can soon fulfil its fundamental functions, including the improvement of the microclimate as well as being a place for contemplation, boating, feeding the aquatic birds and sunbathing by its side.

Thanks to the landscape designs of the Liget Budapest Project, the water surface of the lake will increase to manifold of its present size, thus providing opportunities for the planting of significant aquatic and waterside vegetation.

You can find washing facilities to refresh yourself in several points of the park, and if you are thirsty, you can use any of the thirty-five drinking fountains here. Their water quality is excellent and some of them are equipped with low drinking trays for pets. Of course, drinking facilities are available in the dog adventure parks too.

Moreover, you can find misting systems in the Liget too: walk through them to cool your whole body. Such ‘mist gates’ are installed by the House of Music Hungary, in two places by the Museum of Ethnography, and at the Main Playground.

The Main Playground is regarded as one of the most appealing and frequented parts of the City Park. The carefree recreation of children and families is not only ensured by the misting system but also by playground features specifically catering to water fun to help visitors in the sweltering heat. This is the place for activities involving water and mud.

Visually impaired visitors can enjoy a fountain and a babbling stream in the Sensory Garden. The central features of this part of the park cool the environment and their sound offers excellent recreation.

There are two rain gardens at the Main Playground, which also come in very useful if you want to cool down. These gardens collect the rainwater and help it to seep into the ground, thus enhancing natural water circulation. The rain gardens increase the park’s biodiversity, since the wide range of plant species planted here attract pollinating insects, such as bees and butterflies. In addition, they have aesthetic value and help cool the air, making the park more refreshing during hot summer days.

Similarly interesting water features can be enjoyed in the Mihály Mőcsényi Botanical Garden: you can find an ornamental and a marsh pool – ponds with special vegetation planted in them – by the little stream running here.