Things to do in Budapest
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Menza
This stylish Hungarian restaurant on Budapest’s most lively square takes its name from the Hungarian for a drab school canteen – something it is anything but. Book a table if you can; it’s always packed with diners who come for its simply but perfectly cooked Hungarian classics with a modern twist and chilled atmosphere. Weekday two-course set lunches are a mere 890Ft.
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House of Terror
This startling museum is housed in what was once the headquarters of the dreaded ÁVH secret police. The building has a ghastly history, for it was here that many activists of every political persuasion that was out of fashion before and after WWII were taken for interrogation and torture. The walls were apparently double thickness to mute the screams. A plaque on the outside of this house of shame reads in part: ‘We cannot forget the horror of terror, and the victims will always be remembered’.
The museum focuses on the crimes and atrocities committed by both Hungary’s fascist and Stalinist regimes in a permanent exhibition called Double Occupation. But the years aft…
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Spoon
If you like the idea of dining on the high waters but still remaining tethered to the bank (just in case), Spoon’s for you. It serves international fusion cuisine amid bright and breezy surrounds and the choices for vegetarians are great. You can’t beat the views of the castle and Chain Bridge.
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Chefparade
The best-known cookery school dealing with foreigners is Chefparade in Ferencváros. Course dates vary – consult the website – but they usually run from 10am to 1pm, including visiting a market and preparing a four-course lunch, and cost €50 per person. Courses at other times and of a longer duration can be organised in advance.
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Basilica of St Stephen
Budapest’s neoclassical 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.
To the right as you enter the basilica is a small treasury of ecclesiastical objects. Behind the main altar and to the left is the basilica’s major draw card: the Holy Right Chapel. It contains the Holy Right (also known as the Hol…
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Auguszt Cukrászda
Tucked away behind the Fény utca market and Mammut shopping mall, this is the original Auguszt cafe (there are newer branches) and only sells its own shop-made cakes (200Ft to 500Ft), pastries and biscuits. There’s limited seating on the 1st floor.
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Gellért
Soaking in this art nouveau palace, open to men and women in separate sections, has been likened to taking a bath in a cathedral. The eight thermal pools range in temperature from 26°C to 38°C, and the water – high in calcium, magnesium and hydrogen carbonate – is good for pains in the joints, arthritis and blood circulation. The outdoor pools (open May to September) have a wave machine and nicely landscaped gardens. The cost of admission with a cabin is reduced to 2700Ft after 5pm from May to September; and from October to April after 5pm Monday to Friday, and after 2pm Saturday and Sunday. You get 400Ft back in you stay less than two hours on your daytime ticket.
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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 the Nyugati train station, built in 1877 by the Paris-based Eiffel Company. In the early 1970s a train actually crashed through the enormous glass screen on the main facade when its brakes failed, coming to rest at the 4 and 6 tram line. The old dining hall on the south side now houses one of the world’s most elegant McDonald’s.
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Kárpátia
A veritable palace of fin-de-siècle design dating back more than 130 years that has to be seen to be believed, the ‘Carpathia’ serves almost modern Hungarian and Transylvanian specialities in both a restaurant and less-expensive söröző (brasserie), and there is a lovely covered garden terrace. This is one place to hear authentic csárdás Gypsy music, played nightly from 6pm to 11pm.
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Rudas
These recently renovated baths are the most Turkish of all in Budapest, built in 1566, with an octagonal pool, domed cupola with coloured glass and massive columns. It’s a real zoo on mixed weekend nights, when bathing costumes are compulsory. Here you get 400Ft back if you leave within two hours after you arrive. If you're interested in just swimming, you can enter the renovated pool separately.
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Hospital in the Rock
Part of the Castle Hill caves network, this newly opened attraction was used extensively during the siege of Budapest during WWII. It contains original medical equipment as well as some 70 wax figures and is visited on a guided half-hour tour. More interesting is the hour-long ‘full tour‘ (3000/1500/7000Ft), which includes a walk through a Cold War–era nuclear bunker.
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Új Sípos Halászkert
This lovely, very traditional restaurant faces (and, in the warmer weather, has outside seating in) Óbuda’s most beautiful and historic square. Try the signature halászlé (fish soup; 1100Ft to 2200Ft), which comes in various guises. As the restaurant’s motto puts it so succinctly: Halászlében verhetetlen (You can’t beat fish soup).
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Király
The four pools here, with water temperatures of between 26°C and 40°C, are genuine Turkish baths erected in 1570 and have a wonderful skylit central dome (though the place is begging for a renovation). Here you get a whopping 1000/500Ft back from your admission deposit if you leave within two/three hours.
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Captain Cook Pub
There’s not much to say about the CC except that it enjoys an enviable location diagonally opposite the basilica, the terrace is a delight in the warm weather, there are four beers on tap and the staff are welcoming and friendly. And for us, that’s sufficient.
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Szimpla
This distressed-looking, very unflashy place remains one of the most popular drinking venues south of VI Liszt Ferenc tér, with live music Tuesday to Thursday evenings.
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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.
Below is a 28km network of caves formed by thermal springs that were supposedly used by the Turks for military purposes, as air-raid shelters during WWII, and as a secret military installation during the Cold War.
The walled area consists of two distinct parts: the Old Town to the north, where commoners lived in the Middle Ages (the current owners of the coveted burgher houses here are …
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Hungarian National Museum
The National Museum (a neoclassical structure, purpose-built in 1847) houses Hungary’s most important collection of historical relics. Exhibits trace the history of the Carpathian Basin from earliest times to the end of the Avar period in the early 9th century (on the 1st floor); and the Magyar people and the nation from the conquest of the Carpathian basin to the fall of communism (on the 2nd floor). In the basement, a lapidarium has finds from Roman, medieval and early modern times. Look out for the enormous 3rd-century Roman mosaic from Balácapuszta, near Veszprém; the crimson silk royal coronation robe (or mantle) stitched by nuns in 1031; a reconstructed 3rd-century …
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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. Built in 1859 according to the designs of Frigyes Feszl, the synagogue contains both Romantic-style and Moorish architectural elements. It was renovated largely with private donations, including a cool US$5 million from fragrance and cosmetics baroness Estée Lauder, in the 1990s.On the synagogue’s north side, the Holocaust Memorial (opposite VII Wesselényi utca 6) stands over the mass graves of those murdered by the Nazis in 1944–45. On the leaves of the metal ‘tree of life’ are the family names of some of the hundreds of thousands of victims.
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Ethnography Museum
Visitors are offered an easy introduction to traditional Hungarian life at this sprawling museum opposite the parliament building with thousands of displays in 13 rooms on the 1st floor. The mock-ups of peasant houses from the Őrség and Sárköz regions of Western and Southern Transdanubia are well done, and there are also some priceless objects collected from Transdanubia. On the 2nd floor, most of the temporary exhibitions deal with other peoples of Europe and farther afield: Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. The building itself was designed in 1893 to house the Supreme Court; note the ceiling fresco in the lobby of Justice by Károly Lotz.
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Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art
Housed in the architecturally controversial Palace of Arts opposite the National Theatre, the Ludwig Museum is Hungary’s most important collector and exhibitor of international contemporary art. Works by American, Russian, German and French artists span the past 50 years, while Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Romanian, Polish and Slovenian works date from the 1990s onward. The museum also holds frequent, cutting edge, temporary exhibitions.
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Kéhli
A self-consciously rustic but stylish place in Óbuda, Kéhli has some of the best traditional Hungarian food in town. In fact, one of Hungary’s best-loved writers, the novelist Gyula Krúdy (1878–1933), who lived in nearby Dugovits Titusz tér and whose statue greets you outside the restaurant, moonlighted as a restaurant critic and enjoyed Kéhli’s bone marrow on toast (990Ft as an entrée) so much that he included it in one of his novels.
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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, clocking in at 42% alcohol, 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 sample store (mintabolt). Enter from Dandár utca.
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Széchenyi
At the northern end of City Park, the Széchenyi complex is unusual for its immensity (a dozen thermal baths and five swimming pools), its bright, clean atmosphere and its water temperatures (up to 38°), which really are what the wall plaques say they are. It’s open to both men and women at all times, and you get 400Ft back on your daytime entry fee if you leave within two hours.
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Le Jardin de Paris
A regular haunt of staff from the French Institute across the road (who should know their cuisine française ), the ‘Parisian Garden’ is housed in a wonderful old townhouse with interesting reliefs on the facade and abutting an ancient castle wall. The back garden is a delight in the warmer months. Set lunch is a snip at 1500Ft for two courses.
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Nagyi Palacsintázója
Granny’s Palacsinta Place serves Hungarian pancakes – both the savoury (240Ft to 620Ft) and sweet (130Ft to 640Ft) varieties – round the clock and is always packed. There are other 24-hour branches in Buda (I Batthyány tér 5), Óbuda (III Szentendrei út 131) and Pest (V Petőfi Sándor tér 17–19).
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