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Raoul Wallenberg Memorial
A statue called the Serpent Slayer in honour of Raoul Wallenberg by Pál Pátzay stands in XIII Szent István Park. Of all the 'righteous gentiles' honoured by Jews around the world, the most revered is Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat and businessman who rescued as many as 35,000 Hungarian Jews during WWII.
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Roman Military Amphitheatre
Built in the 2nd century for the Roman garrisons, this amphitheatre about 800m south of Flórián tér could accommodate up to 15,000 spectators and was larger than the Colosseum in Rome. The rest of the military camp extended north to Flórián tér. Archaeology and classical-history buffs taking the 86 bus to Flórián tér should descend at III Nagyszombat utca. HÉV passengers should get off at Tímár utca.
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Roosevelt Tér
Roosevelt tér, named in 1947 after the long-serving (1933-45) American president, is at the foot of Chain Bridge and offers among the best views of Castle Hill in Pest.
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Royal Palace
The Royal Palace has been burned, bombed, razed, rebuilt and redesigned at least six times over the past seven centuries. It's now an 18th- and early 20th-century amalgam reconstructed after the last war. Take a majestic walk through Ferdinand Gate, under Mace Tower, to the Turkish cemetery or relax in the palace gardens behind the Budapest History Museum.
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Royal Postal Savings Bank
On the street south of the US Embassy (V Szabadság tér 12) you'll find the sensational former Royal Postal Savings Bank, a Secessionist extravaganza of colourful tiles and folk motifs built by Ödön Lechner in 1901. It is now part of the National Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank; V Szabadság tér 8) next door, which has reliefs that illustrate trade and commerce through history: Arab camel traders, African rug merchants, Chinese tea salesmen - and the inevitable solicitor witnessing contracts.
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Semmelweis Museum Of Medical History
This museum traces the history of medicine from Graeco-Roman times through medical tools and implements and photographs, and yet another antique pharmacy makes an appearance. Ignác Semmelweis (1818-65), the 'saviour of mothers' who discovered the cause of puerperal (or childbirth) fever, was born in this house.
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Shoes on the Danube
This new monument to Hungarian Jews shot and thrown into the Danube by members of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party in 1944 is by Gyula Pauer. It's a simple affair - 60 pairs of old-style boots and shoes in cast iron, tossed higgledy-piggledy on to a bank of the river -but it is one of the most poignant monuments yet unveiled in this city of so many tears.
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St Gellért Monument
Looking down on Elizabeth Bridge (Erzsébet híd) from Gellért Hill is the St Gellért monument, an Italian missionary invited to Hungary by King Stephen to convert the natives. The monument marks the spot from where the bishop was hurled to his death in a spiked barrel in 1046 by pagan Hungarians resisting the new faith.
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Statue Of Elizabeth
North of Elizabeth Bridge and through the underpass is a statue of Elizabeth, the Habsburg empress and Hungarian queen and the consort of Franz Joseph much beloved by Magyars because, among other things, she learned to speak Hungarian. Sissi, as she was affectionately known, was assassinated by an Italian anarchist in Geneva in 1898.
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Statue Of Imre Nagy
Southeast of V Kossuth Lajos tér is a statue of Imre Nagy, the reformist Communist prime minister executed in 1958 for his role in the Uprising two years earlier. It was unveiled with great ceremony in the summer of 1996.
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Statue Park
Home to more than 40 busts, statues and plaques of Lenin, Marx, Béla Kun and 'heroic' workers that have ended up on trash heaps in other former socialist countries, Statue Park is a truly mind-blowing place to visit.
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Szabadság Tér
Independence Square, one of the largest in the city, is a few minutes' walk northeast of Roosevelt tér. In the centre is a memorial to the Soviet army, one of the very few still left in Budapest. At the eastern side of the square is the fortress-like US Embassy backing onto Hold utca (Moon St). This street, until 1990, was named Rosenberg házaspár utca (Rosenberg Couple St) after the American husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed as communist spies in the USA in 1953.
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Széchenyi Chain 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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Szemlőhegy Cave
This is Budapest's most beautiful cave, with stalactites, stalagmites and weird grape-like formations.
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Telephony Museum
This museum, set within a lovely backstreet garden, documents the history of the telephone in Hungary since 1881, when the world's first switchboard - a 7A1 Rotary still working and the centrepiece of the exhibition - was set up in Budapest. Other exhibits pay tribute to Tivadár Puskás, a Hungarian associate of Thomas Edison, and of the latter's fleeting visit to Budapest in 1891.
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Terror Háza
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.
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Transport Museum & Aviation Museum
In an old and a new wing, this museum has scale models of ancient trains (some of which still run), classic late-19th-century automobiles and lots of those old wooden bicycles called 'bone-rattlers'. There are a few hands-on exhibits and lots of show-and-tell from the attendants. Outside are pieces from the original Danube bridges that were retrieved after the bombings of WWII and a café in an old MÁV coach.
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Tropicarium-Oceanarium
This vast aquarium complex at the Campona shopping centre in south Buda measures 3000 sq metres and is apparently the largest in Central Europe. Don't expect just to see snazzy neon-coloured tropical examples, however; this place prides itself on its local specimens too.
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Újlak Synagogue
A short distance north of the Lukács Bath and tucked away in an apartment block is the Újlak Synagogue, built in 1888 and the only functioning synagogue left on the Buda side.
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Underground Railway Museum
In the pedestrian subway beneath V Deák Ferenc tér and next to the main ticket window, the Underground Railway Museum traces the history of the capital's three underground lines and displays plans for the future. Much emphasis is put on the little yellow metro (M1), Continental Europe's first underground railway, which opened for the millenary celebrations in 1896 and was completely renovated for the millecentenary 100 years later.
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Vasarely Museum
In the crumbling Zichy Mansion, this museum (part of the Museum of Fine Arts) contains the works of Viktor Vasarely (or Vásárhelyi Győző before he emigrated to Paris in 1930), the late 'father of op art'. The works, especially ones like Dirac and Tlinko-F, are excellent and fun to watch as they swell and move around the canvas. On the 1st floor are exhibitions of works by Hungarian artists based abroad.
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Víziváros
Watertown is the narrow area between the Danube and Castle Hill that widens as it approaches Óbuda to the north and Rózsadomb (Rose Hill) to the northwest, spreading as far west as Moszkva tér, one of Buda's main transport hubs. Under the Turks many of the district's churches were used as mosques, and baths were built, one of which is still functioning. Víziváros begins at Clark Ádám tér, leading east from the square.
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Zoltán Kodály Memorial Museum
In the flat where the great composer lived from 1924 until his death in 1967 is the Zoltán Kodály Memorial Museum, with four rooms bursting with furniture, furnishings and other personal items. One room is devoted to Kodály's manuscripts.
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Zsigmond Kun Folk Art Collection
Most of the pottery and ceramics in this charming small museum are from Mezőtúr near the Tisza River, but there are some rare Moravian and Swabian pieces, as well as Transylvanian furniture and textiles. The attendants are very proud of the collection (housed in an 18th-century townhouse); be prepared for some lengthy explanations.
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Zwack Unicum Museum & Visitor Centre
If you really can't get enough of Unicum, the thick brown medicinal-tasting bitter aperitif made from 40 herbs and weighing in at 42% alcohol - and supposedly named by Franz Joseph himself, visit this very commercial museum tracing the history of the product since it was first made in 1790 and inviting visitors to buy big at its mintabolt (sample store).
