The 9 Best College Bars in Budapest

Opened in 1968, Ibolya Espresso is an iconic café and bar in Budapest's downtown. Ibolya is deeply anchored in Budapest's collective memory as two generations of local residents have been coming here for everything from first dates to business meetings for over half a century. The interior furnishings are a genuine throwback to the communist era, featuring Mid-century modern-inspired light fixtures with orange plexiglass and curvilinear chairs topped with red faux leather upholstery.

Mélypont is a cavernous, below-ground bar situated on a quiet backstreet in downtown Budapest. The inside features a mishmash of worn-out, communist-era furniture and usually fills to capacity with students from the neighboring law and political science colleges of Eötvös Loránd University. It's a small miracle that this wallet-friendly student bar continues to exist in an otherwise elite and expensive neighborhood—let's hope it stays that way.

Grinzingi is an unpretentious downtown wine tavern with a simple formula: serve cheap drinks in the center of Budapest that's otherwise teeming with overpriced, tourist-oriented bars. When Grinzingi opened in 1983, it was difficult to find decent wine in the city, so word spread that this wine bar served up low-priced, drinkable stuff. Fast forward 30 years, some of those early patrons still pay repeated visits, as do plenty of college students from nearby universities. The inside hasn't changed much. A dark wood-heavy interior evokes the atmosphere of the bar's namesake Austrian village (Grinzing, known for its wine taverns), and the weathered furniture bears marks of long, alcohol-fueled nights over its decades-long past.

Fahéj is an adorable café and bar on a quite backstreet in Budapest's downtown. Fahéj eschews the trendy vibes and the tourist-targeting approach of other places in the neighborhood, relying instead on a loyal group of regulars, both young and old. Apart from the low-priced drinks, the highlight here is the two atmospheric, high-ceilinged rooms with wooden floors, bookshelves, and small round tables.

It’s easy to miss Altair, a homey, below-ground teahouse on a sleepy side street in Budapest's Palace Quarter, but you shouldn't. Defying space limitations, they've squeezed myriad tiny nooks and crannies that are separated from one another by curtains, pillows, and wooden beams.