The Szechenyi Baths are an institution in the Hungarian capital Budapest. Said to be the largest medicinal spa complex in Europe, they occupy a handsome yellow-painted neoclassical building in a corner of City Park. The sauna and steam baths are indoors; the main pools are open to the air. Although many tourists visit, the Szechenyi Baths, unlike the famous baths on the other side of the Danube in the plush Gellert Hotel, are not predominantly a tourist attraction. They are very much part of city life. Every guidebook to Budapest will instruct the reader to look out for the sight of bathers playing chess while they take the waters. They conduct their games on waterproof boards, with the pieces perilously vulnerable to the splashes created by fellow bathers.

On a recent visit to Hungary to celebrate my father's 60th birthday, we spent an evening relaxing in the pool. This was an experience that brought back memories of my years in Japan. But in Japan, I was generally intimidated by the scalding heat of the average onsen. Hungarian hot-spring baths, I was relieved to learn, are more temperate, comfortably close to body temperature.

Europe has as long or longer a history of bathing than Japan. The thermal bath was a central facet of the culture of Ancient Rome: It is said that one Roman emperor, asked by a foreigner why he bathed once a day, replied, "Because I do not have time to bathe twice." For the Romans, the public bath was more than merely a place to keep clean. It was a place for rest, conversation and socialization. In a heavily stratified society, it was a beacon of equality, visited by everyone from slave to emperor. It is perhaps significant that class distinctions were suspended in baths. It is easier to be democratic when naked — when there are no clothes to provide clues to social status and rank.

But why do some countries have a bathing culture while others do not? Of course, one reason is the geology of the Earth. Japan has 10 percent of the world's active volcanoes, and it is no surprise that subterranean heat feeds hot springs. The Romans, too, lived among active volcanoes, such as Etna and Vesuvius, whose eruption in A.D. 79 destroyed the city of Pompeii. Budapest sits on more than 100 natural springs, most of which yield hot water. In Britain, by contrast, the only genuine hot springs are at the city named, for that reason, Bath. This was the site of Roman baths still preserved today; later, in the 18th century, it was a fashionable spa resort for the English upper class. But in countries such as this, where naturally heated water is scarce, it was harder for a tradition of bathing to develop.

Yet the existence or nonexistence of a bathing culture also has roots in European history. Bathing in Hungary is a relic of a foreign occupation. The country was part of the Ottoman Empire from the early 16th to the end of the 17th century. The invaders brought their Turkish baths with them, and these now are among the few tangible relics of the era in Hungary. Four of Budapest's extant baths date from the Ottoman Period.

In other European countries, the end of a foreign occupation resulted in the demise of a culture of bathing. Another Muslim empire, that of the Moors, occupied parts of present-day Spain from the eighth to the 15th centuries. Like the Turks, the Moors brought the custom of bathing to their new empire. According to writer Katherine Ashenburg, there were 300 public baths in the city of Cordoba when it was recaptured by Christians in 1236. But public bathing was considered indecent by many Christians and the baths were closed immediately. In later centuries, as the Spanish Inquisition sought to impose Catholic orthodoxy on all Spaniards and forced those of other faiths to convert, this policy was taken to greater lengths. With an eye on Muslim ritual ablutions, it was decreed that "Neither themselves (the Moors), their women nor any other persons should be permitted to wash or bathe themselves either at home, or elsewhere." The Inquisition took the mere fact that someone was "known to bathe" as evidence of heresy.

In Europe, then, is the public bath or its absence a symbol of an ancient clash of civilizations? If so, it's a reminder that sometimes past conflicts have had beneficial consequences in the long run. Who in Budapest would give up the baths that their Turkish conquerors brought? It may be a legacy of a dark period in their history, but hundreds of years later, the Hungarians go to bathe, just like the Japanese, for the sheer pleasure of doing so.