A car-free island in the middle of the Danube, with a running track around the edge and a musical fountain at the end.
Two and a half kilometres long, five hundred metres wide, and almost entirely park. Margaret Island sits between Margaret Bridge and Árpád Bridge, is closed to private cars, and functions as the city’s back garden.
It is named after Princess Margaret, the daughter of Béla IV, who was placed in a Dominican convent here in the thirteenth century as a result of a vow her father made during the Mongol invasion. The convent ruins are still on the island, along with the remains of a Franciscan church and a Premonstratensian chapel with a bell from the fifteenth century.
What is on it
The musical fountain at the southern end plays choreographed water-and-music sequences on the hour through the warmer months and is floodlit at night. It is unashamedly popular and rather good.
The Palatinus complex is a large open-air thermal and swimming pool area with slides, busy all summer. The Hajós Alfréd swimming pool, by the southern end, is a listed building by the architect who won Olympic swimming gold for Hungary in 1896 and then designed pools.
There is a Japanese garden with koi and a small thermal spring, a water tower from 1911 that can be climbed for a view, an open-air theatre, and a small zoo with deer and birds.
Getting there and around
Trams 4 and 6 run across Margaret Bridge and stop in the middle of the island — the simplest approach. You can also walk on from either bridge. Once there, everything is on foot, by rented bike, or on the four-wheeled pedal carts that families hire and drive badly.
When
Weekday mornings it belongs to runners and dog walkers. Summer weekends it is full and cheerful. It is worth a couple of hours at any time of year, and in autumn the plane trees along the central avenue are the best thing on the island.
