Where To Go in Budapest
26 places across 9 categories — the landmarks on the postcards, the observation decks, the museums, the parks, and the neighborhoods where the city actually lives.
Landmarks
TODO — what landmarks in Budapest are actually worth the time.
The Hungarian Parliament Building
The third-largest parliament building in the world, put up for a country that was about to lose two-thirds of its territory.
Fisherman's Bastion
A neo-Romanesque viewing terrace that has never defended anything, built purely so that Budapest could be looked at properly.
Széchenyi Chain Bridge
The first permanent bridge between Buda and Pest, and the thing that made them one city.
St Stephen's Basilica
Hungary's largest church, holding the mummified right hand of the king who converted the country.
Buda Castle
A royal palace rebuilt after every siege, now holding the national gallery and a great deal of unresolved argument about what to do with it.
Heroes' Square
A millennium monument to the founders of Hungary, and the emptiest large space in the city.
Museums
TODO — what museums in Budapest are actually worth the time.
Hungarian National Museum
The national story from the Roman period to the end of communism, in the building where the 1848 revolution began.
Museum of Fine Arts
The international collection: a remarkable group of Spanish paintings, a good Egyptian holding, and a hall of plaster casts.
House of Terror
The headquarters of both the fascist and the communist secret police, in the same building, presented as a single continuous horror.
Hospital in the Rock
An emergency hospital and nuclear bunker in the caves under Castle Hill, kept secret until 2002.
History
TODO — what history in Budapest are actually worth the time.
Matthias Church
A church with a tiled roof like a carpet, two coronations, and a century and a half as a mosque in between.
Dohány Street Synagogue
The largest synagogue in Europe, with a memorial garden that is also a mass grave.
Memento Park
Forty-two communist statues pulled off the streets in 1989 and put in a field outside town, which is exactly the point.
Parks & Outdoors
TODO — what parks & outdoors in Budapest are actually worth the time.
Városliget (City Park)
Nearly a square kilometre of park behind Heroes' Square, holding a castle, a zoo, a bath and a boating lake that freezes into a rink.
Margaret Island
A car-free island in the middle of the Danube, with a running track around the edge and a musical fountain at the end.
Food & Drink
TODO — what food & drink in Budapest are actually worth the time.
The Great Market Hall
Budapest's cathedral of produce: paprika, salami and pickles downstairs, tourists eating lángos upstairs.
Szimpla Kert and the Ruin Bars
A bar in a derelict apartment block, furnished from skips, which accidentally invented a category and then a nightlife district.
Culture & Music
TODO — what culture & music in Budapest are actually worth the time.
Széchenyi Thermal Bath
Eighteen pools in a yellow neo-Baroque palace, including the outdoor ones where men play chess in the steam.
Gellért Thermal Bath
Art Nouveau tiling, a glass roof and a quieter, more decorative bathing experience than the big one in the park.
Hungarian State Opera House
Miklós Ybl's neo-Renaissance house of 1884, with acoustics rated among the best in Europe and tickets that cost very little.
Shopping
TODO — what shopping in Budapest are actually worth the time.
Day Trips
TODO — what day trips in Budapest are actually worth the time.
Szentendre
A Serbian Orthodox town of ochre houses and steep lanes, forty minutes up the river on the suburban railway.
The Danube Bend
Where the river turns hard south between hills, with a ruined citadel above it and Hungary's largest basilica at the end.
Neighbourhoods
TODO — what each part of Budapest is like to walk around, and who lives there.
The Jewish Quarter (District VII)
The old Jewish district, the wartime ghetto, and now the loudest nightlife in the city — all in the same few streets.
The Castle District
The medieval town on top of Castle Hill, where a few thousand people live behind baroque fronts on cobbled streets.