Things to do
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Badacsony
A flat topped volcanic butte rises 437 metres above the north shore, its summit ringed by columns of basalt and its lower slopes planted with vines that yield Kéknyelű, a white grape rarely grown outside the district. Marked paths climb from Badacsonytomaj to the Kisfaludy lookout and the Rózsakő, a boulder tied to a courtship legend. Allow three hours from Badacsonytomaj and back.
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Balaton Museum
A neo baroque building raised in the late 1920s holds Keszthely's account of how the lake was lived off before tourism. An hour walks through reed cutting, net weights and harpoons pulled from the mud, and dioramas of fishing through the winter ice. Roman and Avar era finds from the surrounding villages fill the archaeology rooms.
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Festetics Palace
Construction began in 1745 and ran for well over a century, leaving a baroque palace of around a hundred rooms at the head of Keszthely's main street. A fraction of them are open, along with the Helikon Library and its carved oak shelving, a carriage museum and a palm house. Concerts still fill the mirror hall, and an English park surrounds the building.
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Lake Hévíz
Warm springs fill a peat bottomed lake of about four hectares, turning the water over completely every few days and holding it near 24°C even in midwinter. Bathers float among Indian water lilies under a wooden bathhouse reached by walkways. Medical guidance is to bathe in short spells with breaks between, so the visit comes in stages.
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Szigliget Castle
Stone walls went up on this basalt cone after the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century, and imperial orders brought much of the fortress down in 1702. What stands has been consolidated, and the terraces look out over the Tapolca basin, the vineyard hills and a long stretch of Balaton. The climb from the village takes twenty minutes on a steep path.