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Budapest has something for everyone – from dramatic history and flamboyant architecture to healing thermal waters and a nightlife that is unrivalled in Eastern and Central Europe.
Budapest’s beauty is not all God given; humankind has played a role in shaping this pretty face too. Architecturally, the city is a treasure trove, with enough baroque, neoclassical, Eclectic and art nouveau buildings to satisfy everyone. Overall, though, Budapest has a fin de siècle feel to it, for it was then, during the capital’s ‘golden age' in the late 19th century, that most of what you see today was built.
They say the past is another country, but it’s always been just around the corner in Budapest. Witness the bullet holes and shrapnel pockmarks on buildings from WWII and the 1956 Uprising. There are sad reminders like the poignant Shoes on the Danube memorial, but ones, too, of hope and reconciliation – like the 'sword' of the former secret-police building on Andrássy út now beaten into the 'ploughshare' that is the House of Terror, with both sides of the story – left and right – told.
There's a lot more to Hungarian food than goulash, and it remains one of the most sophisticated styles of cooking in Eastern and Central Europe. Magyars may exaggerate when they say that there are three essential world cuisines – French, Chinese and their own. But Budapest’s reputation as a food capital dates largely from the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century and, despite a fallow period under communism, the city is once again commanding attention. So, too, are Hungary's excellent wines – from Eger's complex reds and Somló’s flinty whites to honey-sweet Tokaj.
Budapest is blessed with an abundance of hot springs. As a result, ‘taking the waters’ has been an experience here since the time of the Romans. The array of bathhouses is generous – you can choose from Turkish-era, art nouveau and modern establishments. Some people come seeking a cure for whatever ails them, but the majority are there for fun and relaxation – though we still maintain it’s the world’s best cure for what Hungarians call a macskajaj (cat’s wail) – hangover.
Budapest sits on a crazy quilt of almost 125 thermal springs, and ‘taking the waters’ is very much a part of everyday life here. Some baths such as the Rudas date from Turkish times, others are art nouveau marvels and still others are spick-and-span modern establishments offering all sorts of treatments. Which one you choose is a matter of taste and what exactly you’re looking for – be it fun, a hangover cure or relief for something more serious.
Bombed and rebuilt at least half-a-dozen times since King Béla IV established a royal residence here in the mid-13th century, the Royal Palace has been home to kings and queens, occupiers such as the Turks in the 16th and 17th centuries, and nondomiciled rulers like the Habsburg royalty. Today the Royal Palace contains two important museums, the national library and an abundance of statues and monuments. It is the focal point of Buda's Castle Hill and the city’s most visited sight.
A visit to Budapest during the long, hot summer is not complete without an evening in one of the city's many so-called kertek, literally 'gardens' but in Budapest any outdoor spot that has been converted into an entertainment zone. These often rough-and-ready venues, including courtyards, rooftops and romkocsmák (ruin pubs) that rise phoenix-like from abandoned buildings, can change from year to year and are seasonal, but some of the more successful ones, like Szimpla Kert, are now permanent and open year-round.
If the Royal Palace atop Castle Hill is the focal point on the Buda side, Parliament is the centrepiece along the Danube in Pest. Stretching for some 268m along the river and counting a superlative number of rooms (691) and courtyards (10), it is Hungary’s largest building. Parliament is the seat of the unicameral National Assembly, but parts of it, including the awesome Dome Hall, which contains the iconic Crown of St Stephen, can be visited on a guided tour.
Budapest’s dustless highway is ever present, neatly dividing the city and still serving as an important means of transport. The Danube bridges (all eight of them, not counting train bridges), at once landmarks and vantage points over the river, are the stitches that have bound Buda and Pest together since well before the two were linked politically in 1873. The four bridges in the centre stand head and shoulders above the rest: Margaret Bridge, wonderful Széchenyi Chain Bridge, Elizabeth Bridge and Liberty Bridge.
The largest Jewish place of worship outside New York City, the Moorish-style Great Synagogue is one of Budapest’s most eye-catching buildings. Built in 1859 for 3000 Conservative faithful, the distinctive structure, with its crenellated red-and-yellow glazed-brick facade and two enormous towers, stands next to the Hungarian Jewish Museum. In the courtyard is the poignant Holocaust Tree of Life Memorial, designed by sculptor Imre Varga. On the leaves of the metal 'tree of life' are the family names of some of the hundreds of thousands of victims.
Andrássy út, an elegant and leafy boulevard stretching 2.5km, links Deák Ferenc tér to the south with City Park in the north and contains so much to see, do and enjoy that it has been given an entry on Unesco’s World Heritage list. Along the way are museums, cafes and architectural marvels, but perhaps its most important sight comes at the end. Heroes’ Sq, the entrance to the park, is the nation’s monument to its earliest ancestors and a memorial to its war dead.
Budapest’s largest and most important Christian house of worship is a gem of neoclassical architecture that took more than half a century to complete (largely due to the setback in 1868 when its dome came crashing down in a storm). The dome can now be scaled, and there is a rich treasury of ecclesiastical objects. But the main reason for coming is to view (and perhaps venerate) Hungary’s most sacred object: the mummified right hand of King St Stephen.
Containing statues and other memorials from the communist past, Memento Park can only be described as a cemetery of socialist mistakes, or a well-manicured trash heap of history. In southern Buda, it’s home to about four-dozen statues, busts and plaques of Lenin, Marx and home-grown henchmen like Béla Kun. Ogle the socialist-realist ‘art’ and try to imagine that some of the monstrosities were still being erected in the late 1980s and in place until the early 1990s.
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Hill
Castle HillCastle Hill is a kilometre-long limestone plateau towering 170m above the Danube. It contains some of Budapest’s most important medieval monuments and museums and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Below it is a 28km-long network of caves formed by thermal springs. The walled area consists of two distinct parts: the Old Town to the north, where commoners once lived, and the Royal Palace to the south, the original site of the castle built by Béla IV in the 13th century and reserved for the nobility.
Synagogue
Great SynagogueBudapest's stunning Great Synagogue is the world's largest Jewish house of worship outside New York City. Built in 1859, the synagogue has both Romantic and Moorish architectural elements. Inside, the Hungarian Jewish Museum & Archives contains objects relating to both religious and everyday life. On the synagogue’s north side, the Holocaust Tree of Life Memorial presides over the mass graves of those murdered by the Nazis.
Historic Site
Memento ParkHome to more than 40 statues, busts and plaques of Lenin, Marx, Béla Kun and others whose likenesses have ended up on trash heaps elsewhere, Memento Park, 10km southwest of the city centre, is truly a mind-blowing place to visit. Ogle the socialist realism and try to imagine that some of these relics were erected as recently as the late 1980s.
Cathedral
Basilica of St StephenBudapest’s neoclassical cathedral is the most sacred Catholic church in all of Hungary and contains its most revered relic: the mummified right hand of the church’s patron, King St Stephen. It was built over half a century to 1905. Much of the interruption during construction had to do with a fiasco in 1868 when the dome collapsed during a storm, and the structure had to be demolished and then rebuilt from the ground up. The view from the dome is phenomenal.
Museum
House of TerrorThe headquarters of the dreaded ÁVH secret police houses the disturbing House of Terror, focusing on the crimes and atrocities of Hungary's fascist and Stalinist regimes in a permanent exhibition called Double Occupation. The years after WWII leading up to the 1956 Uprising get the lion's share of the exhibition space (almost three-dozen spaces on three levels). The reconstructed prison cells in the basement and the Perpetrators' Gallery on the staircase, featuring photographs of the turncoats, spies and torturers, are chilling.
Historic Building
ParliamentThe Eclectic-style Parliament, designed by Imre Steindl and completed in 1902, has 691 sumptuously decorated rooms. You’ll get to see several of these and other features on a guided tour of the North Wing: the Golden Staircase; the Dome Hall, where the Crown of St Stephen, the nation’s most important national icon, is on display; the Grand Staircase and its wonderful landing; Loge Hall; and Congress Hall, where the House of Lords of the one-time bicameral assembly sat until 1944.
Museum
Hungarian National MuseumThe Hungarian National Museum houses the nation’s most important collection of historical relics in an impressive neoclassical building, purpose built in 1847. Exhibits on the 1st floor trace the history of the Carpathian Basin from earliest times to the arrival of the Magyars in the 9th century; the ongoing story of the Magyar people resumes on the 2nd floor, from the conquest of the basin to the end of communism.
Monument
Liberty MonumentThe Liberty Monument, the lovely lady with the palm frond in her outstretched arms, proclaiming freedom throughout the city, is southeast of the Citadella. Standing 14m high, she was raised in 1947 in tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Budapest in 1945. The victims’ names in Cyrillic letters on the plinth and the soldiers' statues were removed in 1992 and sent to Memento Park. The inscription reads: 'To those who gave up their lives for Hungary’s independence, freedom and prosperity'.
Archaeological Site
AquincumThe most complete Roman civilian town in Hungary was built around 100 AD and became the seat of the Roman province of Pannonia Inferior in AD 106. Visitors can explore its houses, baths, courtyards, fountains and sophisticated underfloor heating systems, as well as a recreation of a Roman painter's dwelling and Symphorus Mithraeum. The purpose-built Aquincum Museum, just inside the entrance, puts the ruins in perspective, with a vast collection of Roman daily life objects and wall paintings.
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