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Andrássy Út
Andrássy út, listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site, starts a short distance north of Deák Ferenc tér and stretches for 2.5km to the northeast, ending at Hősök tere and Városliget, Pest's sprawling 'City Park'. Andrássy út is such a pretty boulevard and there's so much to enjoy en route that the best way to see it is on foot, though the M1 metro runs beneath Andrássy út from Deák Ferenc tér as far as the City Park if you tire out.
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Applied Arts Museum
This stunning building, designed by Ödön Lechner, was completed for the Millenary Exhibition (1896). The galleries, which surround a central hall of white marble modelled on the Alhambra in southern Spain, contain a wonderful array of Hungarian furniture dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, Art Nouveau and Secessionist artefacts. However, at the last time visited, there were only temporary exhibitions on display.
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Basilica Of St Stephen
Budapest's cathedral was built over the course of half a century and completed in 1905. Much of the interruption had to do with the fiasco in 1868 when the dome collapsed during a storm, and the structure had to be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up. The basilica is rather dark and gloomy inside, but take a trip to the top of the dome, which can be reached by lift and 146 steps and offers one of the best views in the city.
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Béla Bartók Memorial House
North of Szilágyi Erzsébet fasor but still very much in the Buda Hills, this recently renovated house is where the great composer resided from 1932 until 1940, when he emigrated to the USA. Among other things on display is the old Edison recorder (complete with wax cylinders) that Bartók used to record Hungarian folk music in Transylvania, as well as furniture and other objects he collected.
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Buda Castle Labyrinth
The labyrinth, a 1200m-long cave system some 16m under the Castle District, looks at how the caves have been used - from prehistoric times - in nine halls and chambers. The admission fee is very high by Budapest standards, but it's all good fun and a relief from the heat and the crowds above on a hot summer's day.
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Buda Hills
With 'peaks' reaching over 500m, a comprehensive system of trails and no lack of unusual conveyances, the Buda Hills make up what is the city's playground, and they're a welcome respite from hot, dusty Pest in the warmer months. Indeed, some well-heeled Budapest families have summer homes here. If you're planning to ramble, take along a copy of Cartographia's 1: 30,000 A Budai-hegység map (No 6), available from bookshops and newsstands throughout the city.
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Budapest Eye
This attraction exaggerates just a titch when it claims, 'The Budapest Eye is to Budapest what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris and the London Eye is to London.' In reality, it's a hot-air balloon tethered to ropes, on a site between Nyugati train station and the West End City Center mall, which ascends to 150m for some hair-raising views over Budapest. But the kids will love it.
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Budapest History Museum
Also known as the Castle Museum, this place covers 2000 years of the city on three floors of rather jumbled exhibits. Restored palace rooms from the 15th century can be entered from the basement, which contains a display on the palace in medieval Buda. On the ground floor is an exhibition entitled 'Budapest in the Middle Ages', while
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Budapest Puppet Theatre
The puppet theatre, which usually doesn't require fluency in Hungarian, presents shows designed for children on weekdays (usually at or and ) and folk programmes for adults occasionally in the evening.
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Castle Hill
Castle Hill, a 1km-long limestone plateau towering 170m above the Danube, contains Budapest's most important medieval monuments and museums and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. It is the premier sight in the capital, and with its grand views and so many things to see, you should start here.
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Cave Chapel
This chapel on a small hill north of the Gellért Hotel was built into a cave in 1926. It was the seat of the Pauline order until 1951, when the priests were arrested and imprisoned by the communists and the cave was sealed off. It was reopened and reconsecrated in 1992. Behind the chapel is the monastery, with its neo-Gothic turrets visible from Liberty Bridge.
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Citadella
Built by the Habsburgs after the 1848-49 War of Independence to 'defend' the city from further insurrection, by the time the Citadella was ready in 1851, the political climate had changed and it had become obsolete. It was given to the city in the 1890s, and parts of it were symbolically blown to pieces. Today the Citadella contains some big guns and dusty displays in the courtyard, a waxworks, a restaurant and a dance club.
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City Zoo & Botanical Garden
This large zoo and garden, which opened with 500 animals in 1866, has a good collection (big cats, hippopotamuses, polar bear, giraffe), but most visitors come for a glimpse of the calves born in recent years by artificial insemination to Lulu the white rhinoceros. Away from the beasties, have a look at the Secessionist animal houses built in the early part of the 20th century, such as the renovated Elephant House with pachyderm heads in beetle-green Zsolnay ceramic, and the Palm House with an aquarium erected by the Eiffel Company of Paris.
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Crown Of St Stephen
Legend tells us that it was Asztrik, the first abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Pannonhalma in Western Transdanubia, who presented a crown to Stephen as a gift from Pope Sylvester II around the year 1000, thus legitimising the new king's rule and assuring his loyalty to Rome over Constantinople. It's a nice story but has nothing to do with the object on display in the Parliament building.
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Dreher Brewery & Beer Museum
Budapest's - and Hungary's - largest beer maker has a museum at its brewery where you can look at displays of brewing and bottling over the centuries, watch a film about beer-making and/or get stuck into a generous tasting session.
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Electrotechnology Museum
This museum has a collection of 19th-century generators, condensers and motors, and the world's largest supply of electricity-consumption meters. The enthusiastic staff will show you how the alarm system of the barbed-wire fence between Hungary and Austria once worked. There's also a display on the nesting platforms that the electric company kindly builds for storks, so they won't try to nest on the wires and electrocute themselves.
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Elizabeth Bridge
The city's bridges, both landmarks and delightful vantage points over the Danube, are stitches that have bound Buda and Pest together since well before the two were linked politically in 1873. There are a total of nine spans, including a railroad bridge, but the four in the centre stand head and shoulders above the rest.
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Ethnography Museum
This museum offers an easy introduction to traditional Hungarian life, with thousands of displays in 13 rooms. The mock-ups of peasant houses from the Őrség and Sárköz regions of western and southern Transdanubia are well done, and there are some priceless objects collected from Transdanubia. The building was designed in 1893 to house the Supreme Court; note the ceiling fresco, Justice , by Károly Lotz.
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Ferenc Hopp Museum Of East Asian Art
Ferenc Hopp Museum of East Asian Art is in the former villa of its benefactor and namesake. Founded in 1919, the museum has a good collection of Indonesian wayang (shadow) puppets, Indian statuary and Lamaist sculpture and scroll paintings from Tibet.
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Fishermen's Bastion
The bastion is a neo-Gothic masquerade that most visitors (and Hungarians) believe to be much older. But who cares? It looks medieval and still offers among the best views in Budapest. Built as a viewing platform in 1905 by Frigyes Schulek, the bastion's name was taken from the guild of fishermen responsible for defending this stretch of the wall in the Middle Ages. The seven gleaming white turrets represent the Magyar tribes that entered the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century.
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Fő Utca
Fő utca is the 'Main Street' running through Víziváros and dates from Roman times.
At the former Capuchin church (I Fő utca 30-32), used as a mosque during the Turkish occupation, you can see the remains of two Islamic-style ogee-arched doors and windows on the southern side.
The seal of King Matthias Corvinus - a raven and a ring - and the little square with the delightful Louis Fountain ( Lajos kútja ; 1904) is called Corvin tér.
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Foundry Museum
This museum is housed in the Ganz Machine Works foundry that was in use until the 1960s, and the massive ladles and cranes still stand, anxiously awaiting use. The exhibits include cast-iron stoves, bells and street furniture.
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Frankel Leó Út
At Bem József tér, Fő utca turns into Frankel Leó út, a tree-lined street of antique shops and boutiques.
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Franz Liszt Memorial Museum
This is the building where the great composer lived in a 1st-floor apartment from 1881 until his death in 1886. The four rooms are filled with his pianos (including a tiny glass one), portraits and personal effects.
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Funfair Park
This luna park on 2½ hectares dates back to the mid-19th century. There are a couple of dozen thrilling rides, including the heart-stopping Ikarus Space Needle, the looping Star roller coaster (alongside a vintage wooden one from 1926) and the Hip-Hop freefall tower, as well as go-karts, dodgem cars, a carousel built in 1906 and the new T-Rex dinosaur attraction.
