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Ludwig Museum
Budapest's most important collection of contemporary art has moved from the Royal Palace on Castle Hill to the palatial (and equally controversial) Palace of Arts (Mûvészetek Palotája) opposite the National Theatre. The museum is the only one collecting and exhibiting international contemporary art.
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Margaret 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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Margaret Island
Neither Buda nor Pest though part of district XIII, 2.5km-long Margaret Island in the middle of the Danube was always the domain of one religious order or another until the Turks arrived and turned what was then called the Island of Rabbits into - appropriately enough - a harem, from which all 'infidels' were barred. It's been a public park since the mid-19th century.
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Matthias Church
Parts of Castle Hill's landmark church date back some 500 years, notably the carvings above the southern entrance. But basically the church (so named because King Matthias Corvinus married Beatrice here in 1474) is a neo-Gothic creation designed by the architect Frigyes Schulek in 1896.
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Medieval Jewish Prayer House
With parts dating from the 14th century, this medieval Jewish house of worship contains documents and items linked to the Jewish community of Buda, as well as Gothic stone carvings and tombstones from the Great Synagogue (p17) in Pest.
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Miksa Rth Memorial House
This fabulous museum exhibits the work of the Art Nouveau stained-glass maker Miksa Róth (1865-1944) in the house and workshop where he lived and worked from 1911 until his death. Less well known are the master's stunning mosaics. Róth's dark brown, almost foreboding, living quarters stand in sharp contrast to the lively, technicolour creations that emerged from his workshop.
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Military History Museum
Loaded with weaponry from before the Turkish conquest, the Museum of Military History also does a good job with uniforms, medals, flags and battle-themed fine art. Exhibits focus on the 1848-49 War of Independence and the Hungarian Royal Army under Admiral Miklós Horthy (1918-43) and has all you could want to know about Hungary's rich military history.
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Millenary Monument
In the centre of Heroes' Sq (Hősök tere), which is at the northern end of Andrássy út and in effect forms the entrance to City Park, is this 36m-high pillar backed by colonnades to the right and left.
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Millennium Park
Millennium Park is an attractive landscaped complex behind the Mammut shopping mall, comprising fountains, ponds, little bridges, a theatre, a gallery and, for kids, the wonderful Palace of Wonders (Csodák Palotája; www.csodapalota.hu). It’s an interactive playhouse for children of all ages with ‘smart’ toys and puzzles, most of which have a scientific bent. Next door in building B is the House of the Future Exhibition (Jövő Háza Kiállítás), which hosts some unusual shows for kids. You can also enter the park from Fény utca 20-22 and Lövőház utca 37.
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Műcsarnok
Műcsarnok (Palace of Art) is among the city's largest exhibition spaces, and hosts temporary exhibitions of works by Hungarian and foreign artists in fine and applied art, photography and design. A 3-D film that whisks you around Hungary in 25 minutes.
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Municipal Great Circus
Performances at Budapest's circus, Europe's only permanent big top, are at from Wednesday to Sunday, with additional shows at on Saturday and Sunday, and at on Saturday.
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Museum of Commerce & Catering
The catering section of this museum, to the left as you enter the archway, contains an entire 19th-century cake shop in one of its three rooms, complete with a pastry kitchen. There are moulds for every occasion, a marble-lined icebox and an antique ice-cream maker. The commerce collection traces retail trade in the capital. Along with advertisements and electric toys that still work, there's an exhibition on the hyperinflation that Hungary suffered after WWII when a basket of money would buy no more than four eggs.
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Museum Of Fine Arts
The city's outstanding collection of foreign art works is housed in this renovated building dating from 1906. The Old Masters collection is the most complete, with thousands of works from the Dutch and Flemish, Spanish, Italian, German, French and British schools between the 13th and 18th centuries, including seven paintings by El Greco.
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Nagytétény Castle Museum
In a baroque mansion in deepest south Buda, Nagytétény Castle Museum contains an exhibition from the Applied Arts Museum tracing the development of European furniture - from the Gothic to Biedermeier styles (approximately 1450 to 1850) - with some 300 items on display in more than two dozen rooms.
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National Theatre
The National Theatre by the Danube in Ferencváros opened in 2002 to much controversy. The design, by architect Mária Siklós, is supposedly 'Eclectic' to mirror other great Budapest buildings of that style (Gellért Hotel, Gresham Palace, Parliament). But in reality it is a pick-and-mix jumble sale of classical and folk motifs, porticoes, balconies and columns on the outside that just does not work and certainly will date fast. But then they said that about the Parliament building in 1902.
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New Municipal Cemetery
This huge city cemetery, reached by tram from Blaha Lujza tér, is where Imre Nagy, prime minister during the 1956 Uprising, and 2000 others were buried in unmarked graves (plots 300-301) after executions in the late 1940s and 1950s. Today, the area has been turned into a moving National Pantheon and is about a 30-minute walk from the entrance; follow the signs pointing the way to '300, 301 parcela'.
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Northern Inner Town
Northern Inner Town, more accurately called Lipótváros (Leopold Town), is full of offices, government ministries, 19th-century apartment blocks and grand squares. Its confines are, in effect, Szent István körút to the north, V József Attila utca to the south, the Danube to the west and, to the east, V Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, the arrow-straight boulevard that stretches from central Deák Ferenc tér and Nyugati tér, where Nyugati train station ( Nyugati pályaudvar ) is located.
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Nyugati Train Station
The large iron and glass structure on Nyugati tér (known as Marx tér until the early 1990s) is Nyugati train station, built in 1877 by the Paris-based Eiffel Company. In the early 1970s, a train crashed through the enormous glass screen on the main façade when its brakes failed, coming to rest at the 4 and 6 tram line.
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Óbuda
Ó means 'ancient' in Hungarian; as its name suggests, Óbuda is the oldest part of Buda. The Romans established Aquincum, a key military garrison and civilian town north of here at the end of the 1st century AD, and it became the seat of the Roman province of Pannonia Inferior in AD 106. When the Magyars arrived, they named it Buda, which became Óbuda when the Royal Palace was built on Castle Hill and turned into the real centre.
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Opera House
The neo-Renaissance Hungarian State Opera House, among the city's most beautiful buildings, was designed by Mikl�s 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 Haj�s utca.
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Palace Of Miracles
This is a wonderfully thought-out interactive playhouse for children of all ages with 'smart' toys and puzzles, most of which have a scientific bent.
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Pálvölgy Cave
The second-largest cavern in Hungary, 'Paul Valley' Cave is noted for both its stalactites and its bats. The 500m route involves climbing some 400 steps and a ladder so it may not be suitable for children or the elderly.
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Pater Noster
One of the strangest public conveyances you'll ever encounter can still be found in a few office and government buildings in Budapest. They're the körfogó (rotator) lifts or elevators, nicknamed 'Pater Nosters' for their supposed resemblance to a large rosary. A Pater Noster is essentially a rotating series of individual cubicles that runs continuously.
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Planetarium
This large planetarium has star shows as well as 3-D films and cartoons.
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Postal Museum
The museum exhibits the contents of original 19th-century post offices - old uniforms and coaches, those big curved brass horns etc - that probably won't do much for you. But the museum is housed in the seven-room apartment of a wealthy late-19th-century businessman and is among the best-preserved in the city.
