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.
There has been a royal residence on this rock since the thirteenth century, and it has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that asking which century the castle belongs to has no useful answer. Béla IV fortified the hill after the Mongol invasion of 1241. Matthias Corvinus made it a Renaissance court in the fifteenth century, one of the finest north of Italy. The Ottomans took it in 1541 and held it for a hundred and forty-five years, using it largely as a garrison and a powder store. The siege that took it back in 1686 left almost nothing standing.
The Habsburgs built a Baroque palace, which was enlarged into the enormous thing you see now under the Dual Monarchy. That was gutted in the siege of 1944–45, when the German garrison held the hill to the last and the fighting here was some of the worst in the city. What was rebuilt afterwards is a simplified version of the pre-war palace, with the elaborate dome replaced by a plainer one.
Since 2019 a state programme has been rebuilding parts of the pre-1945 castle quarter in their old forms, which is contentious in Budapest — a live argument about whether restoring a lost city is honest or a fiction. You will see cranes.
What is inside
The Hungarian National Gallery occupies several wings and holds the national collection of Hungarian art: medieval altarpieces, the nineteenth-century history painters, and the room of Mihály Munkácsy that most Hungarians come for. The Budapest History Museum, also called the Castle Museum, is the better one if you want the city rather than its art — it goes down into the medieval palace levels, the actual stone rooms of the Corvinus court.
The National Széchényi Library is also here, in the wing facing away from the river.
Getting up
The funicular from Clark Ádám tér has run since 1870 and is charming and slow and often has a long queue. Bus 16 goes all the way up from Deák Ferenc tér. Or walk: a stepped path climbs beside the funicular and takes twelve minutes, and there is a lift from the Dózsa György tér side.
Give the hill half a day if you are visiting a museum, or two hours if you only want to walk it.
More Landmarks
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.