DIRECT LAKESIDE HOTEL ON THE GOLDEN COAST
Hotel Magistern – Siófok
The area along the shore of Lake Balaton /which the ancient Romans called Pelso/ was already home to a vibrant, bustling life in antiquity, as archaeological finds attest. This didn’t change with the arrival of the Hungarians. Even the first Hungarian linguistic record, the founding charter of the Tihany Abbey, mentions the settlement by name.
Regarding the name: in the Finnic-Ugric proto-language, both “sió” and “fok” mean watercourse or dug canal, so the settlement’s name is doubly related to water. A turning point in Siófok’s life was the construction of the Southern Railway in 1861. The previously dusty village became one of the centers of the country’s bathing culture.
HOTEL MAGISTERN – SIÓFOK
The capital of Balaton
Practically everyone heading to Lake Balaton stopped at its yellow-brick station building, because the local train (or ‘vicinal line’) allowed them to reach Füred via Siófok four hours earlier with the Kisfaludy ferry, than if they had traveled directly to Füred from Pest by stagecoach. The “boarding inns” (or ‘beszálló vendéglők’) and “dance halls” (or ‘hangáldák’) were built one after another. The Sió Sluice (or ‘Sió-zsilip’) was completed, the harbor was built, and little holiday villas sprang up like mushrooms.
Then, in 1878, the wooden “bath house” built in the Swiss style was raised on the water, and on its ornately carved façade, the inscription proudly proclaimed: “Hungarian Sea,” and indeed, people came from all over Europe to splash around here. If they weren’t in the water, they passed the time in the bath house’s upstairs viewing room or its hundred-person drawing room (or ‘társalgó’). Siófok virtually embodied the charm of the happy ‘Peaceful Era’ of the K.u.K. period—perhaps it is no coincidence that it was here that the ‘King of Operetta,’ Imre Kálmán, was born and absorbed this world, the composer of so many famous works like The Csárdás Princess, Countess Maritza, and The Violet of Montmartre.
Siófok is the capital of Lake Balaton in summer, reachable from Budapest and Nagykanizsa via the M7 motorway, or on main road number 7, and from Szekszárd via main road number 65.
A város partvonala két szakaszra osztható. A Sió csatornától nyugatra fekvő szakasz Ezüstpart néven ismert, keletre pedig az Aranypart található. A szállodák nagy része – szállodánk is és a város szórakoztató központja, a Petőfi sétány az Aranyparton található.
The city’s shoreline can be divided into two sections. The section lying west of the Sió Channel is known as the Silver Shore (Ezüstpart), and the Gold Shore (Aranypart) is located to the east. Most of the hotels—including our hotel—and the city’s entertainment center, the Petőfi Promenade, are situated on the Gold Shore.
We also undertake the organization of events, weddings, and conferences!
Our large, air-conditioned lecture hall can accommodate up to 300 people, depending on the arrangement. In the smaller section rooms, we can seat 40-70 and 30-40 people, respectively. In addition to the three lecture halls, three small rooms, each accommodating 15 people, are also available for group sessions. All the technical equipment necessary for organizing conferences is also available.
