Hungary
Budapest
Two cities across one river, a parliament built to be seen from the water, and thermal springs under both banks.
Budapest is two cities that merged in 1873 and still behave differently: hilly Buda, with its castle quarter and Ottoman-era bathhouses on one bank, and flat Pest, with its boulevards and the vast neo-Gothic Parliament facing the water on the other. The Danube runs between them under a line of bridges, and thermal springs come up under both halves, which is why the city bathes in public pools rather than swimming in them. The old Jewish quarter behind the ring road in Pest is where it drinks, in bars made out of derelict apartment blocks.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
Hungarian
Currency
HUF
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Budapest
The river the Danube splits the city in two, and the walk along either bank after dark is what people actually fall for
The baths springs under both banks feed grand public pools, some domed and Ottoman, one enormous and yellow out in the city park
Pest's boulevards a capital built at speed for the millennium, with a grand avenue, an opera house and the continent's first underground railway beneath it
The seventh district courtyards of half-derelict blocks turned into bars, wrapped around the old Jewish quarter and its synagogues
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
16-28° days
47.481° N, 19.146° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Budapest
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Weather & when to go to Budapest
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Wellness prime Sep-Apr
Activity seasons none fair good prime
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Budapest
December to February are cold and grey, the days are short and the hills often sit under fog - and that is exactly when the outdoor thermal pools are at their best, steaming in the cold air with snow on the parapets. High summer is the opposite problem: the baths, the castle hill and the riverboats all queue, and much of the city leaves town in August. Late spring and September get the place at its most comfortable.
Top things to do in Budapest
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The Hungarian Parliament
history 👍 PopularA neo-Gothic pile of spires and a red dome stretched along the Pest embankment, built for a country far larger than the one it now governs. The inside is seen on timed guided tours, which take in the dome hall and the crown of the medieval kings.
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Castle Hill - Matthias Church and the Fishermen's Bastion
history 👍 PopularThe long limestone ridge in Buda holding the royal palace, a church with a patterned tiled roof and a white neo-Romanesque terrace of turrets built purely as a viewing gallery over the river.
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Szechenyi Baths in the City Park
wellness 👍 PopularA huge yellow neo-baroque bathhouse with a dozen indoor pools and three outdoor ones that stay open all year, where men play chess on floating boards in water hot enough to steam in winter.
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The Ottoman baths on the Buda bank
wellness ⭐ Highly recommendedTwo of the working baths under and beside Gellert Hill keep their sixteenth-century octagonal pools under domes pierced with coloured glass, left from the Turkish occupation; one adds a rooftop pool looking straight up the river.
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Dohany Street Synagogue and the Jewish quarter
history ⭐ Highly recommendedThe largest synagogue in Europe, Moorish-revival with two onion-domed towers, and behind it a memorial garden where a metal weeping willow carries names on its leaves. The streets around it were the wartime ghetto and are now the nightlife district.
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Andrassy ut and the little yellow metro
culture artsA boulevard of townhouses and embassies running from the centre to Heroes' Square, with the opera house on it and the House of Terror at number sixty in the former secret police headquarters. Underneath runs the 1896 line, shallow, tiled and barely two carriages long.
-
Heroes' Square and the City Park
historyA colonnade of Magyar chieftains and kings closing the end of the avenue, with the Museum of Fine Arts on one side, and behind it a park holding a boating lake and a castle stitched together from every Hungarian architectural style at once.
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Shoes on the Danube Bank
historySixty pairs of iron shoes cast in 1940s styles and bolted to the embankment below Parliament, marking the Jews shot into the river by Arrow Cross militia in the winter of 1944.
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Gellert Hill and the Liberty Statue
scenicA steep dolomite bluff on the Buda side with paths zigzagging up through the rock to a bronze woman holding a palm frond, and the widest view there is of both banks and the bridges between them.
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The Great Market Hall
foodAn 1897 iron-framed hall with a patterned tiled roof at the Pest end of Liberty Bridge, three floors of paprika strings, sausage, pickles and embroidery, with hot food counters along the upper gallery.
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Margaret Island
nature wildlifeA long car-free island in midstream with a rubberised running track around its rim, the ruins of a medieval convent in the middle and a fountain that performs to music at the southern end.
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Goulash, langos and Tokaji
foodGulyas here is a soup rather than a stew, paprika runs through most of the kitchen, langos is fried dough under sour cream and cheese, and the sweet wine of Tokaj is poured by the glass in most decent cellars.
Best areas to stay in Budapest
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
District V - Belvaros and Lipotvaros
First-time visitors $$Riverfront core, Parliament and the basilica
Explore hotels in District V - Belvaros and Lipotvaros →
District VII - Erzsebetvaros
Nightlife & character $Old Jewish quarter, courtyards and late bars
Explore hotels in District VII - Erzsebetvaros →
District VI - Terezvaros
Grand streets $$Boulevard grandeur around the opera
Explore hotels in District VI - Terezvaros →
District I - the Castle District
Views & quiet $$$Cobbled hilltop above the river
Explore hotels in District I - the Castle District →
District IX - Ferencvaros
Best value $Student streets behind the market hall
Explore hotels in District IX - Ferencvaros →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Budapest
Getting to & around Budapest
Getting there
Fly into Ferenc Liszt airport, with a direct bus into the middle of Pest in about forty minutes
Flight
Budapest Ferenc Liszt International (BUD)
Twenty-four km southeast of the centre. A dedicated airport bus runs to Deak Ferenc ter, where three metro lines meet, in roughly forty minutes; a slower city bus connects to the southern end of the M3 metro. Taxis work from a regulated desk outside arrivals rather than by hailing.
Train
Keleti and Nyugati stations
Vienna is about two and a half hours by fast train, with services from Prague, Bratislava, Zagreb, Belgrade and Bucharest; most international trains arrive at Keleti, which sits on two metro lines
Coach
Nepliget
International coaches from across central Europe terminate at the bus station on the M3 metro line, a few stops south of the centre
Cruise
Pest embankment
Danube river cruises tie up on the Pest bank in the middle of the city, most of them on the runs between Passau, Vienna and the lower Danube
Getting around
Metro
Four lines crossing at Deak Ferenc ter, including the 1896 line under Andrassy ut, which is a sight in itself
TBC
Tram
Tram 2 runs the Pest embankment past Parliament and is one of the best rides in the city; 4 and 6 work the ring road around the clock
TBC
Bus
Fills in the Buda hills and the castle, where the trams and metro do not reach
TBC
Walking
Pest is flat and gridded and most of the centre is walkable; Buda means hills, steps and a funicular
Free
Suburban rail
The HEV lines run out to Szentendre and the northern suburbs from Batthyany ter
TBC
Public bikes
A city bike-share scheme with docks across the flat Pest side and along the embankments
TBC
River boat
Public boats run along the Danube between Buda and Pest landings, cheaper and slower than the tourist cruises
TBC
Day trips from Budapest
Szentendre
Half dayRiverside art town
A baroque town of painted merchant houses and cobbled lanes founded by Serbian refugees, with Orthodox churches, galleries and Hungary's biggest open-air village museum a little further up the road.
Getting there
train | car | ferry
40 min by suburban train north
The Danube Bend
Full dayRiver gorge & citadel
Where the river swings sharply between hills: a ruined hilltop citadel at Visegrad looking straight down on the bend, and across the water at Esztergom the enormous domed basilica that is the seat of the Hungarian church.
Getting there
train | bus | ferry | car
1 hr 30 min by train, bus or boat north
Godollo Palace
Half dayRoyal palace
A long baroque palace that was Empress Elisabeth's favourite escape from Vienna, with restored state rooms, her private apartments and a park behind it.
Getting there
train | car
45 min by suburban rail east
Eger
Full dayCastle & wine town
A baroque town under the castle that famously held out against an Ottoman siege in 1552, with the northernmost surviving minaret in Europe and a valley of wine cellars cut into soft volcanic rock on its edge.
Getting there
train | bus | car
2 hr by train or coach northeast
Holloko
Full dayPaloc village
A whitewashed village of timber-galleried houses under a ruined castle in the Cserhat hills, protected in its pre-modern form and still lived in rather than staged.
Getting there
car | bus | tour
2 hr by car or bus northeast
A little history of Budapest
The Romans held the Buda bank as Aquincum, capital of Lower Pannonia, and their amphitheatres and baths are still traceable in the northern suburbs. Magyar tribes arrived at the end of the ninth century, and the twin towns of Buda and Pest grew on either side of a river crossing. Ottoman armies took Buda in 1541 and held it for a century and a half, which is where the domed bathhouses come from; a Habsburg-led siege took it back in 1686 and left it in ruins.
The city that exists now is largely a product of the fifty years after the 1867 compromise with Austria, when Buda, Pest and Obuda were merged and a capital was built to match Vienna, culminating in the 1896 millennium celebrations. The twentieth century was brutal: the Jewish population was ghettoised and deported in 1944, the siege of 1944 to 1945 destroyed every bridge across the Danube, and the 1956 uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks. The bullet scars are still visible on plenty of facades in the seventh district.
The Romans found Aquincum on the Buda bank, capital of Lower Pannonia
Ottoman forces take Buda and hold it for 145 years
A Habsburg-led army retakes Buda, leaving the town wrecked
Buda, Pest and Obuda merge into a single city
The millennium brings Heroes' Square and the first underground railway on the continent
The Jewish population is confined to a ghetto in the seventh district and deported
The siege ends with every Danube bridge destroyed
The uprising begins in the city and is crushed by Soviet troops
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+36
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
FAQs about Budapest
▸ How many days do you need in Budapest?
Three is a good minimum: one for the Pest side and Parliament, one for the castle hill and the Buda bank, and one built around a bath and the Jewish quarter. A fourth lets you add Szentendre or the Danube Bend without rushing.
▸ Which thermal bath should you go to?
The big yellow complex in the city park is the postcard, with outdoor pools open all year and the most people in them. The Ottoman-era baths on the Buda side are smaller, darker and older, with original domed pools, and feel more like bathing than like a day out. Take flip-flops and a towel, and check whether the day you want is mixed or single sex at the historic ones.
▸ What are ruin bars?
Bars opened from the early 2000s in the courtyards and gutted flats of derelict apartment blocks in the seventh district, furnished with whatever was to hand. Several have become large and heavily touristed; the smaller ones a few streets off are where the idea still works.
▸ Is Budapest good value?
Yes by western European standards, and noticeably cheaper than Vienna two hours upriver, though the main tourist streets charge what they can. Walk a couple of blocks off the embankment or the ring road and eating and drinking cost a fraction of it.
▸ Does Hungary use the euro?
No. Hungary is in the EU but kept the forint, so you will be dealing in a separate currency. Cards work almost everywhere, including on transport ticket machines, and cash is mostly useful at markets and small bars.
More in Hungary
Debrecen
The Calvinist capital of the Great Plain, with a thermal forest at one end of its high street and the puszta an hour west.
✓ best Apr-OctEger
A baroque town under the castle that held out in 1552, with a Turkish minaret in its middle and a valley of cellars on its edge.
✓ best Apr-OctLake Balaton
Hungary's inland sea: warm shallow water and loud resorts on one shore, volcanic hills, vineyards and an abbey on the other.
✓ best Apr-Oct