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Gellért Baths
The city's most famous thermal spa is the Gellért Baths below Gellért Hill. Soaking in this Art Nouveau palace has been likened to taking a bath in a cathedral. The pools here maintain a constant temperature of 44°C (111°F).
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Gellért Hill & The Tabán
Gellért Hill, a rocky hill southeast of the Castle District, is crowned with a fortress and the Independence Monument. From Gellért Hill, you can't beat the views of the Royal Palace or the Danube and its fine bridges, and Jubilee Park on the south side is an ideal spot for a picnic. The Tabán, the leafy area between Gellért and Castle Hills, stretching northwest as far as Déli train station, is associated with the Serbs, who settled here after fleeing from the Turks in the early 18th century.
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Golden Eagle Pharmacy Museum
Just north of Dísz tér on the site of Budapest's first pharmacy (1681), this branch of the Semmelweis Museum of Medical History contains an unusual mixture of displays, including a mock-up of an alchemist's laboratory and a small 'spice rack' used by 17th-century travellers for their daily fixes of herbs.
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Great Synagogue
The Great Synagogue is the largest Jewish house of worship in the world outside New York City and can seat 3000 of the faithful. Built in 1859, it contains both Romantic-style and Moorish architectural elements. Concerts are held here in summer.
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Gül Baba's Tomb
This overly reconstructed tomb contains the remains of one Gül Baba, an Ottoman dervish who took part in the capture of Buda in 1541, and is known in Hungary as the 'Father of Roses'. The tomb is a pilgrimage place for Muslims, especially from Turkey, and you must remove your shoes before entering. There's a pleasant café here with fine views.
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György Ráth Museum
Most of the Chinese and Japanese collection of ceramics and porcelain, textiles and sculpture is housed in the György Ráth Museum, in a gorgeous Art Nouveau residence a few minutes south down Bajza utca.
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Hercules Villa
Hercules Villa, in the middle of a vast housing estate northwest of Fő tér, is the name given to some reconstructed Roman ruins. The name is derived from the astonishing 3rd-century floor mosaics of Hercules' exploits found in what was a Roman villa.
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Holocaust Memorial Center
This centre, opened in 2004 on the 60th anniversary of the start of the Holocaust in Hungary, displays pages from the harrowing 'Auschwitz Album', an unusual collection of photographs documenting the transport, internment and extermination of Hungarian Jews, found by a camp survivor after liberation. In the courtyard, a sublimely restored synagogue from 1924, designed by Leopold Baumhorn, hosts temporary exhibitions.
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House of Hungarian Photographers
The House of Hungarian Photographers is an interesting venue in the city's theatre district with top-class photography exhibitions. It is in delightful Mai Manó Ház, which was built in 1894 as a photography studio, and has the bizarre meaning 'Modern Devil House'.
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House Of Terror
This museum, housed in the same building that served as headquarters of the dreaded ÁVH secret police, purports to focus on the crimes and atrocities committed by both Hungary's fascist and Stalinist regimes, but the latter, particularly the years after WWII leading up to the 1956 Uprising, gets the lion's share of the exhibition space (almost three dozen rooms, halls and corridors over three floors).
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Hungarian Agricultural Museum
This rather esoteric museum is housed in the stunning baroque wing of Vajdahunyad Castle, built for the 1896 millenary celebrations on the little island in the park's lake and modelled after a fortress in Transylvania (but with Gothic, Romanesque and baroque wings and additions to reflect architectural styles from all over Hungary). Here you'll find Europe's largest collection of things agricultural (fruit production, cereals, wool, poultry, pig slaughtering, viticulture etc).
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Hungarian National Gallery
The Hungarian National Gallery is an overwhelmingly large collection that traces the development of Hungarian art from the 10th century to the present day. The largest collections include medieval and Renaissance stonework, Gothic wooden sculptures and panel paintings, late-Gothic winged altars, and late Renaissance and baroque art.
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Hungarian National Museum
This large neoclassical structure purpose-built in 1847 contains Hungary's most important collection of historical relics. Look out for the enormous 3rd-century Roman mosaic from Balácapuszta; the crimson silk royal coronation robe; the reconstructed 3rd-century Roman villa from Pannonia; the treasury room with pre-conquest gold jewellery; a stunning baroque library; and Beethoven's Broadwood piano.
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Hungarian Natural History Museum
This museum has lots of child-friendly hands-on interactive displays over three floors. The geological park in front of the museum is well designed, and there's an interesting exhibition focusing on both the natural resources of the Carpathian Basin and the flora and fauna of Hungarian legends and tales.
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Hungarian Railway History Park
This mostly outdoor museum contains more than 100 locomotives (most of them still working) and an exhibition on the history of the railroad in Hungary. There's a wonderful array of hands-on activities - mostly involving getting behind the wheel - for kids. From early April to late October a vintage diesel train leaves Nyugati train station for the park four times a day. The fare is included in the admission price.
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Hungarian State Opera House
The neo-Renaissance Hungarian State Opera House, among the city's most beautiful buildings, was designed by Miklós Ybl in 1884. If you cannot attend a concert or an opera, join one of the guided tours, which usually includes a brief musical performance. Tickets are available from the souvenir shop on the eastern side of the building facing Hajós utca.
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Imre Varga Exhibition House
This space exhibits works by Imre Varga (1923-), one of Hungary's foremost sculptors, who seems for decades to have sat on both sides of the political fence - sculpting Béla Kun and Lenin as dexterously as he did St Stephen, Béla Bartók and even Imre Nagy. A short distance southwest of the museum is more of Varga's work: a group of metal sculptures of rather worried-looking women holding umbrellas.
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Independence Bridge
Opened for the millenary exhibition in 1896, Independence Bridge has a fin-de-siècle cantilevered span. Each post of the bridge, which was originally named after Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph, is topped by a mythical turul bird ready to take flight. It was rebuilt in the same style in 1946.
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Independence Monument
The charming lady with the palm frond proclaiming freedom throughout the city from atop Gellért Hill was erected in 1947 in tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Budapest in 1945. If you walk west for a few minutes along Citadella sétány north of the fortress, you'll come to what is arguably the best vantage point in Budapest.
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Inner Town Parish Church
On the eastern side of Március 15 tér, sitting uncomfortably close to the Elizabeth Bridge flyover, is where a Romanesque church was first built in the 12th century within a Roman fortress. You can still see a few bits of the fort, Contra Aquincum, in the small park to the north. The present church was rebuilt in the 14th and 18th centuries, and you can spot Gothic, Renaissance, baroque and even Turkish elements both inside and out.
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Jewish Museum
In an annexe of the Great Synagogue is the Jewish Museum, which contains objects related to religious and everyday life, and an interesting hand-written book of the local Burial Society from the 18th century. The Holocaust Memorial Room relates the events of 1944-45, including the infamous mass murder of doctors and patients at a hospital on Maros utca. English-language tours are available hourly.
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Kassák Museum
Sharing the same building as the Vasarely Museum but facing the inner courtyard, the Kassák Museum contains some real gems of early-20th-century avant-garde art, as well as the complete works of the artist and writer Lajos Kassák (1887-1967). It is a three-hall art gallery on the 1st floor.
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Kerepes Cemetery
About 500m southeast of Keleti train station is the entrance to Budapest's equivalent of Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, established in 1847. Some of the mausoleums are worthy of a pharaoh, especially those of statesmen and national heroes Lajos Kossuth, Ferenc Deák and Lajos Batthyány. Other tombs are quite moving, like those of actress Lujza Blaha and poet Endre Ady. Plot 21 contains the graves of many who died in the 1956 revolution.
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Király Baths
In between Margaret Island and the Castle District, along the Danube on the Buda bank, are the Király baths on Fő utca. The four pools here, with water temperatures of between 26°C and 40°C (79°F to 104°F) are genuine Turkish baths erected in 1570 and featuring a wonderful skylit central dome.
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Kiscelli Museum & Municipal Gallery
Housed in an 18th-century monastery, later a barracks that was badly damaged in WWII and again in 1956, the exhibits at this museum southwest of Flórián tér attempt to tell the story (from the human side) of Budapest since liberation from the Turks. The museum counts among its best displays a complete 19th-century apothecary moved here from Kálvin tér, ancient signboards advertising shops and other concerns and rooms furnished with Empire, Biedermeier and Art Nouveau furniture and bric-a-brac.
