Medieval old town, Ottoman remains, Habsburg period, Communist past, the current day – a well-rounded Budapest trip offers a glimpse into the layers that have shaped Hungary’s capital city, with plenty to eat, drink, and shop along the way.
Note that I planned, wrote, and recorded several audio tours on VoiceMap. The app uses your location to play audio automatically at the right time and place – you can put your phone away and roam the city with me, so to say. I have three Budapest tours currently: City Center, Jewish Quarter, Andrássy Avenue.
Budapest is highly walkable and bikeable and the city's public transportation is among the best in Europe; for visitors, a 24-hour and a 72-hour travelcard (€14) are available through the BudapestGO app (Google Play; App Store). Use the MOL Bubi app (Google Play; App Store) for the local bike share system. Here, more information about getting into and around the city.
Where to stay? Any place within the Grand Boulevard is considered central; if you would like to be in the busiest part of downtown, aim for District 5. The middle digits of a postal code indicate its district number, so 1054 would be in District 5, for example. I have written a short guide to each of Budapest's main neighborhoods.
FRIDAY
1 p.m. Sausage shop, Andrássy Avenue, Heroes’ Square, City Park
Jump headlong into Budapest with a meal at Pinczi, a pretense-free traditional sausage shop across from the wonderful Nyugati train station, the oldest in Budapest. You will stand elbow-to-elbow with fellow diners while mopping up the grease stains of paprika-laced sausages and roasted pork belly cuts. This type of low-priced lunch-only eatery was popular in days of yore, but currently nearing extinction. For good reason, some locals say, but Pinczi is an exception, as the ever-present line before the glass display proves.
After the meal, walk over to Andrássy Avenue, one of the nicest in Budapest, named after Gyula Andrássy (1823-1890), an important foreign minister of Austria-Hungary of whom Queen Sisi was especially fond. A leisurely stroll will take one past fancy stores and apartment palaces that seem to have been parachuted here straight from Renaissance Florence (there's an actual replica of the Palazzo Strozzi).
To make sense of Andrássy Avenue, one needs to go back to the 1867 creation of Austria-Hungary. Alongside Vienna, Budapest became the shared capital of a large empire. The city ballooned from a small, rather provincial town into a worldly metropolis within a few decades. From a population of 125,000 in 1850, Budapest grew into one of the biggest cities in Europe by 1900, approaching a million people, most of whom lived here on the flat Pest side (Buda was physically constrained by its hilly terrain).
With money and political power came the desire for monumental representation: massive public buildings and open plazas emerged to parade Hungary’s newfound prestige. Down went the one and two-story flimsy houses – vestiges of a modest past many were eager to forget – and up rose the towering ministries and court buildings, immense bank headquarters, and gleaming hospitals, museums, universities, and national monuments.
The urban fabric of the city also improved. Taking cues from Baron Haussmann's renovation of Paris a decade earlier (and from Vienna's Ringstraße), spacious ring roads, sweeping boulevards, and tree-lined avenues were built in the 1870s to improve connectedness and mobility, to make space for the rising population, and to express the city’s ambitions. Most prominent of these was Andrássy Avenue.
While the whole of Andrássy symbolizes Budapest's golden decades at the end of the 19th century, architect Miklós Ybl's Opera House looks especially striking after its recent gut renovation. Amid the coffered loggias and expressive surface treatments one can locate famous composers carved from stone, for example Franz Liszt beside the entrance and Monteverdi, Palestrina, and Beethoven on the balustrade up top. (An example of the friendly rivalry between Vienna and Budapest at the time: imperial authorities specified that the size of the Budapest Opera had to be smaller than the Viennese.)
A twenty minute panoramic walk down Andrássy takes one to Heroes’ Square, a national monument packed with statues of Hungary's (mostly) enlightened statesmen enclosed by two sets of curved colonnades. I am partial to Saint Stephen, on the very left, Hungary's first king, who added Hungary to the Christian nations of Europe in the year 1000. And to the Renaissance ruler Matthias Corvinus, whose Buda Castle was known for its astonishing library and for its Italian artists, architects, and cooks (his castle was destroyed during the Ottoman period in the 16th and 17th centuries but the remains are visible in the Castle Museum).
How come no statues of the great Habsburg kings and queens of Hungary (Maria Theresa, for example)? The anti-royalist and nationalist Communist regime of the 1950s removed the Habsburgs who are patiently biding their time in a statue depot on the Budapest outskirts. At the center of the square soars a victory column topped with Archangel Gabriel, in bronze and with outsize wings, surrounded by equestrian statues of ancient chieftains. They are the Hungarian tribal leaders who led the way into the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century AD (their names are carved into the base; my name, Tas, comes from one of them).
Heroes' Square is flanked by the Museum of Fine Arts (Szépművészeti), home to one of the great old master collections in Europe with paintings by Raphael, Titian, Bronzino, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Frans Hals, Pieter Saenredam, Goya, and many others (here, my favorites). This museum often turns out to be a great surprise for art-loving tourists to Budapest. Most paintings had belonged to the Esterházy family, one of the wealthiest in Austria-Hungary, before the cash-strapped Prince Miklós Esterházy sold them to the Hungarian state in 1871. Paintings were also donated by archbishops, such as the great János Pyrker, and members of the high aristocracy.
The nearby City Park attracts many fans of architecture. The House of Music was designed by Japanese starchitect Sou Fujimoto; inside, an excellent exhibition charts the development of music from its folk beginnings to the present day. The building overlooks the spectacular roof garden of the Museum of Ethnography, also with an outstanding permanent collection that recently opened to the public.
That strange-looking castle in the back? Mixing elements of famous buildings from across the Hungarian Kingdom, the Vajdahunyad Castle was erected as a temporary object for the 1896 Millennial Exhibitions (an ambitious, World's Fair-like event) but proved too popular to be knocked down. Inside it hides today Budapest's least sexy, but completely amazing Museum of Agriculture. Hungary was the "breadbasket" of the Habsburg Monarchy, supplying vast quantities of field crops, meat, and wine to the less favorably situated Alpine regions. The museum's rich collection provides plenty of supporting evidence, from farming techniques to crop species to wildlife to the Mangalica pig to Tokaj winemaking.
The boating lake facing the Vajdahunyad Castle transforms into an ice skating rink in the cold months. Budapest is a city of baths and the mother of all thermal baths, Széchenyi, also hides in the City Park. You could read my thermal bath guide before picking one that suits you best, although I think it is perfectly sensible to visit more than one bath during a Budapest stay. The charming Millenium Underground (M1) – the oldest subway line in Europe, made for the exhibitions of 1896 – is a good way to return to the city center; there's a station on Heroes' Square.
4 p.m. National Museum, Esterházy cake, a special library, a good thrift store
The imposing Neoclassical building of the National Museum, the country's oldest, might seem intimidating but I recommend at least a glance at the astonishing collection. Ground floor: an overview of the region's inhabitants from the Celts through the Romans to the Avars. Upstairs: the history of Hungary up to the 1989 fall of Communism.
A special exhibition on the ground floor displays the Seuso Treasure, fourteen silver vessels from the late-Roman era that were unearthed in Hungary, as well as porcelain from Central Europe. The charming museum garden hides brilliant sculptures, including one of the museum's handsome founder, Ferenc Széchényi, and an excellent pastry shop, Geraldine, known for its Esterházy cake.
Budapest’s Palace Quarter consists of a cluster of impressive buildings that cradle the National Museum (especially those on Pollack Mihály tér behind the museum). Once the winter palaces of the Hungarian aristocracy, they were located strategically near the museum whose ceremonial hall functioned as the Upper Chamber of the Hungarian Parliament between 1866 and 1902, before the current building along the Danube was completed. The Hungarian aristocracy is long gone – most fled the country before the Communist takeover in 1948 – but a few of the lavish interiors have been preserved.
Such as that of the Municipal Szabó Ervin Library, formerly the Baron Wenckheim Palace. The fourth floor opens to an unusual scene: students laboring away under giant chandeliers and gilded Rococo motifs in what used to be the ballroom and the mahogany-paneled cigar room. For a small fee, tourists can also go up there (tickets are sold at the front desk; the library is closed on Sunday).
Is it time for a drink? At Fecske, one can enjoy a cool lager beside students taking their study breaks of various lengths and with various amounts of alcohol. A bit older, and self-consciously cool crowd flocks to the nearby Lumen Café. Those more into shopping can unearth gems at Typo Showroom, a higher end thrift store on the corner of Horánszky and Krúdy Gyula utca.
9 p.m. Dinner & drinks in the Jewish Quarter (District 7)
Budapest’s Old Jewish Quarter, also known as the Party District, is becoming a victim of its own success, but one can still find treasures amid rowdy bachelor party crews decked out in uniforms (the main danger zone is Gozsdu Udvar). Such as M, a small, cozy restaurant that defies categorization. The menu is a collection of dishes that Miklós Sulyok, the literary-minded owner, is partial to: grilled goat cheese salad with beets, sweetbread in a white tarragon-laced sauce, monkfish pasta. Pair them with Hungarian wines and book in advance.
For post-dinner drinks, I recommend a stop at Szimpla Kert, the ruin bar that prompted the neighborhood’s revival in the early 2000s. Szimpla is no longer the offbeat bar of its infancy – you will likely have to navigate through camera-wielding tourists to approach the bar – but it has retained its native spirit and prices also remained reasonable. One could also saunter over to Madách tér, where fashionable locals fill the sidewalk outside Telep and Központ. An older crowd flocks to Kisüzem and Fekete Kutya, both just a few blocks away.
SATURDAY
10 a.m. Castle Hill, National Gallery, Matthias Church, Fisherman's Bastion, art gallery, lunch
Fuel up on breakfast, plenty of options out there. Then head to the Buda side, ideally via the recently pedestrianized and renovated Chain Bridge, the oldest permanent connection between the two sides, completed in 1849. Hike up to the Castle Hill with fellow tourists via the path that sets off to the right of the tunnel. An even better option: Castle Hill funicular.
The second half of the 19th century brought revolutionary advancements in urban transportation and Budapest was among the first to introduce new forms of transport starting with the Castle Hill funicular (1870), followed by the cog-wheel railway (1874), and the Millennium underground (1896), all of which are still operational today. This steeply ascending funicular, the second oldest of its kind in the world, was built to provide easy and affordable connection between the Chain Bridge and the ministries on the hilltop.
After WWII bombs damaged the former royal palace, the ensuing Communist regime knocked down precious and salvageable Baroque and neo-Baroque elements out of a misguided sense of anti-royalism. Starting in the 1960s, the palace was turned into a cultural complex, housing the National Gallery, the Széchényi Library, and the Budapest History Museum.
The National Gallery features a sweeping permanent collection of artworks by Hungarian artists. I enjoy the Biedermeier cabinet pictures of József Borsos; the pointillist paintings of József Rippl-Rónai; the works of Lajos Tihanyi, the most gifted member of the Nyolcak, a Hungarian art group (1909-1919) inspired by Expressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism; the pioneering minimalism of Vera Molnár (here, my favorites).
It took me a little bit to get used to the emphatically 1970s interior of the castle's grand halls, but I have come around. Some people within Budapest's architecture community worry that this Socialist Modern interior will become a victim of the government's current re-historicization efforts on the Castle Hill. On the top floor of the museum, one can explore how Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Concept Art showed themselves in Communist Hungary. Bonus: the general admission ticket provides access to the museum's panoramic cafe on the outdoor loggia and also the palace's dome with circular Budapest views.
Those into urban history might want to drop by the Budapest History Museum located in another wing of the palace. The below-ground levels feature the excavated remains of the Gothic and Renaissance palaces of King Sigismund and Matthias Corvinus, while the upper floors provide an overview of Budapest – an informative exhibition despite a much-needed modernization.
Lots of construction is taking place currently on the Castle Hill: buildings destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944-1945 are springing back to life (only parts of the Castle Hill were restored during the Communist era due to budget constraints). Partially funded by the EU, many of the vanished buildings emerge as perfect copies of what had been lost, such as the Royal Guard and Riding Halls.
I view the redevelopment of the Castle Hill as a positive, but I wish that contemporary architecture also got a chance to leave its mark. The neighborhood is regaining some of its political weight as government ministries, including the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Finance, are moving back here from the Pest side.
What Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was to Paris and Kaspar von Zumbusch to Vienna, Alajos Stróbl (1856-1926) was to Budapest: the country’s greatest realist sculptor, known for his energetic and expressive renditions of the famous and the historic. Stróbl's King Matthias Fountain, carved in 1904, is among my favorite sculptures in Budapest. It shows Hungary’s dashing Renaissance king presiding over a hunting scene, bow and arrow in hand, his antlered kill lying lifeless before his feet.
Matthias’s two aides exude supreme confidence while three loyal vizslas are ready for more action. Szép Ilonka, the village girl with the baby deer doubles as Diana, goddess of hunting. I love the deadpan smirk of the figure of Galelotto Marzio at all of this machismo; he was an Italian humanist thinker who joined Matthias’s court in Buda (lower left corner).
Little has remained of the modest medieval church where people such as Matthias Corvinus and Habsburg Franz Joseph were crowned King of Hungary since architect Frigyes Schulek transformed the Matthias Church into the exuberant Gothic Revival building we see today (similar to how Viollet-le-Duc "updated" the medieval Notre-Dame in Paris in the late 19th century). The dim inside is coated in an immense 19th-century fresco cycle honoring the life of the Virgin and the saints of Hungary.
Outside the church, that stern and confident gentleman cast in bronze is the canonized Stephen (975-1038), the country’s first king who laid the foundations of Christian Hungary and whom we have already encountered at Heroes' Square. The base of the monument shows scenes from his life, including his coronation, his legislative work, his financing of new church buildings, and his suppression of Vienna, of course.
Beside the Matthias Church stands the fairy-tale-like Fisherman’s Bastion, a similar 19th-century reimagination of the medieval past by architect Frigyes Schulek. The soaring white towers sync up with the church and offer stunning Budapest vistas. There's a small admission to enter the upper deck from which the views are especially impressive.
In front of the church on Szentháromság tér rises a Baroque plague column (1713), which was a Habsburg specialty: as a token of gratitude following a plague, the surviving residents erected such oddly shaped monuments adorned with flying angels and the patron saints of plague victims such as Saint Roche, Saint Sebastian, and Carlo Borromeo. While impressive, this one doesn't come close to the prototype of such columns, located along Vienna's Graben.
Here begins a quieter section of the hilltop, with winding residential streets that exude a medieval air, such as the panoramic Tóth Árpád promenade which overlooks the softly rolling Buda hills where much of the city's middle and upper-middle classes reside. It is here that one might catch a glimpse of long-time Castle Hill residents.
Koller Gallery on Táncsics Mihály utca is a pretense-free art gallery with incredible views and wonderful 20th-century Hungarian art. The top floor contains the memorial room of the Hungarian sculptor, Amerigo Tot, whose studio this once was and whom you might recognize from his cameo appearance in The Godfather Part II. Next door, the lavish Baroque palace at #7 belonged to the aristocracy before the Communist nationalizations (it was built for the Erdődy and later purchased by the Hatvany family). Today, the Institute for Music occupies the halls with a permanent exhibition about rare musical instruments made in Hungary between the 18th and 20th centuries.
This street is also where the medieval Jewish Quarter once stood. A small exhibition at 26 Táncsics utca shows the remains of a Sephardic prayer room and headstones found in a nearby Jewish cemetery. Across the street, under the building at #23, was the much larger Gothic-style synagogue of the Ashkenazi Jews. The synagogue was destroyed during the 1686 liberation war against the Ottoman army and the remains are yet to be excavated.
At the end of the 18th-century the so-called Copf Style embodied the transition from the Baroque to Neoclassicism, reflecting the emerging ideas of the enlightenment and its cool rationality. Facades became flatter, less tectonic, and featured simpler entrance gates and rectangular window surrounds. Reliefs, medallions, and braided strings replaced the more expressive Baroque sculptures and statues ("copf" translates to braided hair in Hungarian and German).
József Grigely, a teacher of humanities and a high school principal, lived in the building at 7 Bécsi kapu tér. He flaunted his classical learning by commissioning portrait medallions of Virgil, Cicero, Socrates, Livius, Quintilianus, and Seneca, as well as reliefs showing the allegories of arts and sciences. The house later went to Lajos Hatvany, scion of a wealthy industrialist family and himself a literary critic who socialized here with writers and poets. The names of his famous guests, including Thomas Mann, Sándor Márai, and Béla Bartók, are carved into the pavement in front of the house.
Descend back to the city through Várfok utca. Széll Kálmán tér – “Moszkva tér” to locals who still use its Communist moniker – currently enjoys a renaissance thanks to places such as the hip Taiwanese-inflected 101 Bistro, your designated lunch spot, and the bar next to it, Nemdebár.
2 p.m. Parliament building, Art Nouveau architecture, St. Stephen's Basilica
Start the afternoon on Kossuth tér, outside the Hungarian Parliament building. As mentioned, Budapest came into its own with the creation of Austria-Hungary in 1867, when this Habsburg-controlled small town suddenly transformed into a capital, beside Vienna, of an immense empire (my interview with Habsburg historian Steven Beller can help make sense of this place, which was the most multi-ethnic country in Europe and perhaps not as doomed as people often think).
Along came skyrocketing economic growth, rapid urbanization, and the build-up of eye-catching architecture. The most ambitious project was this bombastic Gothic Revival piece stretched along the Danube and containing 691 rooms (the Hungarian Parliament offers a 45-minute guided tour of the inside). Behind the building, right on the riverbank, is the famous Shoes on the Danube memorial to the Budapest victims of the Holocaust.
Kossuth tér’s hushed imperial elegance ripples out to the nearby Liberty Square, known for its strange mix of public sculptures, ranging from an obelisk raised to Soviet heroes to a lifesize statue of Ronald Reagan to a controversial WWII memorial. Why controversial? It shows the allegorical figure of Hungary being attacked by a ferocious eagle who leaves broken ruins in its wake. The message: Nazi Germany, which occupied Hungary in March 1944, is only to blame for the Holocaust in Hungary. The facts are of course more complicated. Distraught local civilians made a protest memorial right before it.
The article linked above has more details, all I will say here is that almost the entire Jewish population of countryside Hungary was killed in the Holocaust, nearly half a million people, with active support from the local police. However, notably, most Jewish people of Budapest survived the Holocaust, which is why Budapest remains the largest Ashkenazi city in continental Europe today with a community of about 100,000 people. Their survival was thanks to the Soviet troops that liberated the Jewish ghetto in January 1945, before deportations to Auschwitz could begin.
Here hides also Hungary’s seminal Art Nouveau building, the Postatakarékpénztár, designed by architect Ödön Lechner. Lechner concocted a local variant of Art Nouveau inspired by Hungarian folk art and using the colorful glazed tiles made by the Pécs-based Zsolnay (Pécs, one of the my favorite cities besides Budapest, is a perfect weekend destination). The best view of the building's striking roof is from the rooftop bar of Hotel President across the street from it.
Budapest's biggest church, the Saint Stephen’s Basilica, is well worth the small admission, not the least for the panoramic 360-degree views from its soaring dome. The building (1851-1905) is a textbook example of Revival architecture. When Miklós Ybl, also in charge of the Budapest Opera House, took over the design plans in 1868 he found inspiration in the Italian Renaissance. The entrance portal and the monumental interior spaces bring to mind the 15th-century Basilica of Sant’Andrea in Mantua, the semicircular colonnade on the back side resembles the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, while the grand dome harks back to Michelangelo’s Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
The front facade features statues of two of the four Church fathers, Pope Gregory on the left, Saint Jerome on the right (the other two, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, are on the sides). The Basilica’s tympanum up top contains a sculpture group with the Virgin and the Child at its center surrounded by Hungarian saints, notably King Stephen and his son, Emeric, to the left. The inside is comparably grand and best known for the sanctuary that holds the remains of Stephen’s right hand and for the wonderful painting by Gyula Benczúr showing the moment when Stephen offers the Holy Crown of Hungary to the Virgin.
4 p.m. Pastries and shopping
Hungarian pastry-making evolved from the French traditions, but such inventive treats as the Dobos and the Esterházy torte are proof that it found its groove by the end of the 19th century. Touristy it may be, the cakes of the historic Cafe Gerbeaud on Vörösmarty tér are still a benchmark.
Two ideas for shopping at local businesses: Nanushka makes chic designer clothing for women, while Vass Cipő specializes in high-end handmade men’s shoes; Vass' Haris-köz store has long been a revered address among shoe fanatics around the world (they close at 4 p.m.). A true gem off the tourist-heavy Váci Street: Kaczián is a tiny, old-school store specializing in handmade ties, bow ties, pocket squares, and scarves.
6 p.m. Concert at the Liszt Academy
The city of Liszt, Bartók, Kodály, Kurtág, Budapest still has a thriving music scene with plenty of classical, jazz, and world music concerts. There are several high-quality performance halls to choose from: the Liszt Academy has the deepest classical music calendar, Müpa and the House of Music offer the widest array of options, and there's also the Budapest Opera. Jazz fans should consider the Budapest Music Center, while those into avant-garde dance and theater might enjoy the shows at Trafó.
9 p.m. Dinner & drinks
For dinner, head to Kiosk, a fashionable restaurant in downtown specializing in updated Hungarian fare. I especially like their goulash soup, the egg noodles, the seasonal vegetable stew (főzelék) variations, and the updated mákosguba, a traditional bread pudding soaked in vanilla custard and laced with poppy seeds. After dinner, one could saunter over to Cabrio, a lively natural wine bar with a wide assortment of local producers (with 22 wine regions, Hungary is wine country). If craft beers are more your speed, consider Élesztő; for cocktails: Boutique Bar.
SUNDAY
9 a.m. Thermal baths, breakfast, Bartók Béla Boulevard
Start the day early, before the crowds reach Rudas, a thermal bath whose Turkish section was built in the 16th-century under the Ottoman pasha, Sokollu Mustafa. Highlights include the outdoor hot tub atop the building with sweeping Budapest views. Thermal baths can leave you drained of energy – but also feeling weightless, almost levitating – so expertly made coffee at the nearby Kelet could be especially rewarding. Along the way, one could stop by the tiny bakery, Pékműhely, for tasty chocolate rolls called kakaós csiga.
In general, the Buda side can't hold a candle to Pest when it comes to energy, culture, commerce, and dining. So it is all the more delightful that this area – Bartók Béla Boulevard – has become a revitalized neighborhood teeming with cafés, bars, and art galleries. Local residents are an eclectic mix: fashionable Millennials, engineering students from the nearby University of Technology, and old-timers.
Across the campus hides Fiók, a wonderful designer stationery store (I'm a repeat customer because I lose or misplace about five pencils a week). For a drink, let me recommend a deeply local option: Borpatika. It's an old-school watering hole for students and neighborhood alcoholics, with notably excellent homemade pogácsa.
12 p.m. Dohány Street Synagogue, farewell lunch
Budapest's post-19th-century history is Jewish history. Without the outsize Jewish contributions to the economy, to culture, to sciences, the city wouldn't have ballooned into a flourishing metropolis by 1900, when a quarter of the residents were Jewish. In return, the political leadership crushed all anti-semitism until 1918, which wasn't the case in the neighboring Vienna for example.
Although much smaller today, Budapest's Jewish community is still the largest in continental Europe. Very few people are practicing or even religious, but Jewish culture is still palpable in other ways. Even if you aren’t Jewish, I recommend a visit to the Dohány Street Synagogue, the biggest in Europe. The building's maroon and yellow brick exterior is a good example of the search for a Jewish national architecture that occupied so many architects in Europe in the mid-19th century. The admission ticket provides access also to the Jewish Museum upstairs, and to the Holocaust memorials behind the synagogue, including the famous Emanuel tree.
Crown your Budapest trip with a generous lunch at the nearby Gettó Gulyás, whose name harks back to the Jewish ghetto that the area was turned into during the winter months of 1944 and 1945. Besides the restaurant's namesake goulash, their standout is the bone marrow with toast and the túrógombóc – soft cottage cheese dumplings blanketed in sour cream and powdered sugar.
To end the trip on a high note, pair it with a glass of Tokaji, the complex sweet wines from eastern Hungary that are made with a benign fungus. They are really delicious.
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