Where the river turns hard south between hills, with a ruined citadel above it and Hungary's largest basilica at the end.
North of Budapest the Danube runs west to east, then turns sharply south between the Börzsöny and Pilis hills and heads for the city. That turn is the Danube Bend, and it has been strategically important since the Romans put a frontier along it.
Visegrád
A citadel sits on a hill three hundred metres above the water, and the view from it — the river bending away in both directions, wooded hills on either side — is the postcard of the region and genuinely worth the climb.
Below, by the river, are the substantial remains of the royal palace. Visegrád was a royal seat in the fourteenth century under the Angevin kings, and in 1335 it hosted the congress at which the kings of Hungary, Bohemia and Poland agreed a trade route bypassing Vienna — an event the modern Visegrád Group takes its name from. The palace was lost, then rediscovered in the 1930s under later building, and is now partly reconstructed.
Getting up to the citadel: a bus runs from the village in season, a taxi is easy to arrange, or you can walk up in about an hour on a steep path.
Esztergom
Twenty kilometres further, Esztergom is the seat of the Hungarian Catholic church and was the country’s capital until the thirteenth century. King Stephen was born and crowned here.
The basilica is the largest church in Hungary, finished in 1856, standing on a bluff over the river with a dome you can see from a very long way off. The Bakócz Chapel inside is early Renaissance and was dismantled and reassembled when the new church went up around it. The treasury holds the richest collection of ecclesiastical objects in the country, and the cupola can be climbed.
From the terrace you look straight across the Mária Valéria bridge into Štúrovo, in Slovakia. You can walk over it and back.
Getting there
Trains from Nyugati station run to Nagymaros-Visegrád on the far bank, from where a small ferry crosses in five minutes. Buses to both towns leave from Újpest-Városkapu. In summer, MAHART runs boats from central Budapest — slow, several hours, and lovely if the weather holds. Check the timetable both ways before committing to the boat.
