Fifteen days from Warsaw to Vienna: four countries south, ending on the hill a Polish king came down

Three nights in Warsaw, three in Krakow, two in Kosice, three in Budapest and three in Vienna, by train and one long coach, with nothing booked ahead but four museums.

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Length
15 days, 14 nights
Where you stay
Warsaw, Kraków, Košice, Budapest, Vienna
Places
42 across 15 days
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This is the eastern half of central Europe, and it holds together better than a map suggests. Warsaw to Krakow is two hours and twenty minutes. Krakow to Kosice is a coach across the Carpathian foothills. Kosice to Budapest is three and a half hours by train, Budapest to Vienna two and forty. Nobody flies, nobody drives, and the longest single day of travel is under five hours.

The route has an ending built into it. On 12 September 1683 an army under Jan Sobieski, king of Poland, came over the wooded hill north of Vienna and down through the vineyards into the Ottoman siege lines, and the siege broke that afternoon. Fifteen days after leaving his capital you can stand on that hill with a glass of wine in your hand, which is a satisfying way to finish a journey.

In between: a city rebuilt from paintings because the originals were deliberately destroyed, the one big Polish city that was not, a Slovak town that was Hungarian until 1920 and again from 1938 to 1945 and never moved an inch, and Budapest, which is the best value of the five and the one people extend their stay in.

Highlights

  • Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, in Krakow, three streets from the main square
  • The largest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe, two hundred thousand stones under trees in the middle of Warsaw
  • A hoard of nearly three thousand gold coins found by builders under a Kosice street in 1935
  • Forty-odd Communist statues standing in a field outside Budapest, hauled there rather than melted down
  • An outdoor thermal pool in Budapest in winter, steam coming off it and chess going on in the water
  • A glass of new wine on the Vienna hill the relief army came down in 1683

Where to stay

Warsaw, three nights

After the rising of 1944 the surviving population was expelled and German demolition squads spent three months systematically destroying what stood. About eighty-five per cent of the left bank was gone. The old town you walk through was rebuilt between 1949 and 1963 from photographs, plans and eighteenth-century paintings, and UNESCO listed it in 1980 for exactly that reason.

Before the war one Varsovian in three was Jewish, the largest Jewish community in Europe. Three nights covers both of those stories properly and leaves an afternoon over. Stay in the centre or in Powisle by the river.

Krakow, three nights

By train from Warsaw, Warsaw Central railway station to Kraków Główny railway station, about 252 km.

The royal capital until 1596 and the one large Polish city the war left standing, which is why it looks five hundred years old and Warsaw does not. The largest medieval square in Europe, a castle on a rock above the Vistula, a university where Copernicus studied and a Leonardo three streets off the square.

Three nights gives you the square, the castle hill, and a whole day for Kazimierz and Podgorze across the river. It does not include Auschwitz or the salt mines; either needs a fourth night, and Auschwitz needs a booked slot.

Kosice, two nights

By bus from Kraków, Main Bus Station in Kraków to Bus Station Košice, about 177 km.

Kosice was Kassa, the second city of Hungary, until the border moved in 1920. It went back to Hungary from 1938 to 1945 and has been Slovak since, and it did all of that without moving. Its main street is a long spindle of pastel palaces with a Gothic cathedral in the middle of it, the largest church in Slovakia.

Nobody comes here, which is the point of putting it in. Two nights is enough for the cathedral, the museum with the gold in it, and one evening finding out that eastern Slovakia has a bar scene.

Budapest, three nights

By train from Košice, Košice railway station to Keleti pályaudvar, about 213 km.

Two cities joined in 1873: hilly, quiet Buda on the west bank and flat, loud, nineteenth-century Pest on the east, with the river between them. Everything grand in Pest went up in one forty-year burst before 1914 and everything on the Buda hill was rebuilt after the siege of 1945 flattened it.

Three nights gets you the castle hill, the Jewish quarter, a field of discarded Communist statues and one long afternoon in hot water. Stay in Pest, in the fifth, sixth or seventh district; Buda is prettier and you will spend every evening crossing back.

Vienna, three nights

By train from Budapest, Keleti pályaudvar to Wien Hauptbahnhof, about 214 km.

The capital of an empire of fifty million people, with the furniture still in place: a ring road on the line of the walls, palaces at each end, an opera that performs most nights of the season and coffee houses where nobody will bring the bill until asked.

After twelve days of cities that were knocked down and put back, Vienna is the one that was not, and the contrast does most of the work. Three nights, ending on the hill north of the city where this route's other end sent an army in 1683.

Day by day

Day 1 in Warsaw

Stalin's tower, Chopin's heart and a colonnade with nothing behind it

Start at the top of the tower opposite the station, because Warsaw makes no sense until you have seen how much of it is new. The Palace of Culture was a gift from Stalin in 1955, which is one description of a thing nobody asked for. It is 237 metres to the tip, holds theatres, cinemas and a swimming pool, and the viewing terrace is on the thirtieth floor. From up there the reconstructed old town is a small brown patch surrounded by a great deal of glass.

Then a museum in a palace by the river for the composer this country exports. Chopin left Warsaw at twenty and never came back; he died in Paris at thirty-nine and his sister brought his heart back in a jar of alcohol, past the Russian border guards, and it is sealed inside a pillar of the Holy Cross church on Krakowskie Przedmiescie. The museum is multimedia, well done, and has his last piano.

Finish at the tomb. Three arches of a colonnade stand alone on a square with nothing behind them: they are all that survived of the palace that stood behind them, and the unknown soldier lies under them with a flame and two guards. The changing of the guard happens hourly, and at noon on Sunday it is done properly with a band.

  1. 14:15

    Palace of Culture and Science

    Historic

    Stalin's gift to Warsaw, finished in 1955, 237 metres to the tip, with over 3,000 rooms containing theatres, cinemas, a pool and a museum. The terrace on the thirtieth floor is the best orientation in the city; buy online at busy times.

  2. 16:00

    Frederic Chopin Museum

    Culture

    A multimedia museum in the Ostrogski Palace with Chopin's last piano and his manuscripts. He left Warsaw at twenty and died in Paris; his heart came back in a jar and is walled into a church five minutes away.

  3. 18:00

    Tomb of The Unknown Soldier

    Historic

    Three surviving arches of the Saxon Palace colonnade, standing alone on Pilsudski Square, with an eternal flame and a permanent guard. The guard changes on the hour; the full ceremony with a band is at noon on Sundays. Free.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner in Srodmiescie

    Eat

    The streets around Nowy Swiat and Plac Zbawiciela have the best of the modern Polish cooking, and it costs about half what the same meal does in Vienna.

With more time: The Vistula boulevards, ten minutes east, are the best thing Warsaw has built this century: kilometres of riverside decking, bars and beaches, with wild woodland on the far bank.

Day 2 in Warsaw

A thousand years of Polish Jewish life, one surviving synagogue and two hundred thousand graves

The museum in Muranow stands on ground that was the ghetto and is now 1950s housing blocks built on its rubble, opposite the monument where the German chancellor knelt in 1970. It is not a Holocaust museum, and that matters: eight galleries take you from the first Jewish merchants arriving in the tenth century, through a reconstructed painted synagogue ceiling, a Renaissance street and the Jewish enlightenment, and only then to the war. Three hours.

Walk south afterwards to the one pre-war synagogue in Warsaw still standing. It was built in 1902 in a courtyard behind a block of flats, which is what saved it: the Germans used it as a stable and a warehouse rather than blowing it up. It is small, active, and you knock to get in.

Then the cemetery on Okopowa, founded in 1806 and still in use. More than two hundred thousand stones stand under mature trees over thirty-three hectares, some upright, many leaning, most half swallowed by ivy, and it is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries left in Europe. Ludwik Zamenhof, who invented Esperanto, is buried near the gate. Bring something to cover your head.

  1. 09:30

    POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

    Culture

    Eight galleries on a thousand years of Jewish life in Poland, opened in 2013 on the site of the ghetto, with a reconstructed seventeenth-century synagogue ceiling at the centre. Three hours minimum and timed tickets; book at weekends.

  2. 12:45

    Lunch in Muranow

    Eat

    There is a good cafe in the museum, and the streets south of it hold some of the best Israeli and Jewish cooking in the city.

  3. 14:15

    Nożyk Synagogue

    Religious

    Built in 1902 inside a courtyard behind an apartment block, which is why it survived: the occupiers used it as a warehouse and a stable rather than destroying it. Warsaw's only pre-war synagogue still standing and still in use. Modest dress; men cover their heads.

  4. 15:30

    Jewish Cemetery

    Historic

    Founded in 1806 on Okopowa and still in use, with over 200,000 stones across 33 hectares under mature trees. Zamenhof, who invented Esperanto, is buried near the entrance. A small charge, and heads covered.

With more time: The great burial ground on the other side of the road is Catholic and equally overgrown, with the sculpture of Warsaw's nineteenth century in it, and the two together are the quietest hours the city offers.

Day 3 in Warsaw

The old town that is not old, and sixty-three days in 1944

The market square, the tenements and the walls were rebuilt from 1949 on the footprint of what the demolition squads destroyed. Painted fronts on all four sides, a bronze mermaid in the middle, and a great many cafes. It is a reconstruction, everybody knows, and it took a generation of work by people who had lost the originals.

The castle at the end of the square was blown up in 1944 and left as an empty plot until 1971, when rebuilding began, paid for largely by public donations. What is inside is substantially original, because museum staff hid the doors, floors, fittings and paintings through the occupation. The room to see is hung with views of eighteenth-century Warsaw by Bernardo Bellotto, who signed himself Canaletto after his uncle. Architects worked from those canvases: doorways, cornices and shop signs were copied off them. No other city in Europe was rebuilt from paintings.

The afternoon belongs to the rising. The museum out in Wola opened in 2004 in a tram power station, and it is loud, dense and unsimplified. The rising began on 1 August 1944 and lasted sixty-three days. About sixteen thousand fighters and something between a hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand civilians died, while the Red Army held the far bank of the river and did not cross.

  1. 09:30

    Old Town Market Square

    Architecture

    The heart of the reconstructed old town, put back between 1949 and 1953 from photographs, plans and old paintings, and listed by UNESCO in 1980 precisely because of that. Painted merchant fronts, a bronze mermaid, cafes on all four sides.

  2. 10:45

    The Royal Castle

    Historic

    Blown up in 1944, rebuilt between 1971 and 1984 on public donations, and refitted with the original interiors that museum staff hid through the war. The Canaletto room holds Bellotto's 1770s views of the city, which the rebuilding was worked from.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch on the way to Wola

    Eat

    Eat before the museum rather than after it. The bistros around Plac Grzybowski are halfway and good.

  4. 15:15

    The Warsaw Rising Museum

    Culture

    In a former tram power station, opened on the sixtieth anniversary in 2004: three floors on the sixty-three days from 1 August 1944, with a replica sewer to crawl through and a wall of survivors' voices. Timed tickets and busy at weekends.

Day 4 in Kraków

South to Krakow, and a Leonardo three streets off the square

Two hours and twenty minutes on a fast train and the country changes character. Krakow Glowny sits on the north side of the old town, ten minutes through the park from the square.

The square is two hundred metres on each side, laid out in 1257, and it is the largest medieval square in Europe. Sit on it for half an hour before doing anything else, because it is the sort of space that needs to be occupied rather than crossed.

Then three streets north, to the picture. Lady with an Ermine was painted by Leonardo around 1490, bought by a Polish prince in Italy in 1798, hidden from Napoleon, hidden again from the Germans, taken by them anyway, recovered from a Bavarian country house in 1946 and hung here. It is one of four surviving portraits of women by Leonardo. In the same museum is an empty frame: Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man was looted in 1939 and has never been found.

Finish at the church on the corner of the square. Every hour a trumpeter plays from the taller tower, four times, once to each compass point, and stops abruptly halfway through the phrase.

  1. 09:30

    Train to Krakow

    Travel

    Warszawa Centralna to Krakow Glowny, two hours twenty, hourly. Seats are numbered, so book rather than turn up on a Friday afternoon.

  2. 13:00

    Late lunch near the Planty

    Eat

    Drop the bag. The student streets between the station and the square have milk bars where a full lunch costs less than a beer on the square itself.

  3. 14:30

    Main Market Square

    Visit

    Two hundred metres on each side, laid out in 1257 and the largest medieval square in Europe, with the whole evening life of the city on it. The cafes on the edge charge for the view; the ones a street back do not.

  4. 15:45

    Princes Czartoryski Museum

    Visit

    Reopened in 2019 after a long rebuild, holding Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine of about 1490 along with Rembrandt and a great deal of Polish decorative art. Raphael's looted Portrait of a Young Man is still represented by an empty frame.

  5. 17:45

    St Mary's Basilica

    Visit

    Two mismatched brick towers on the corner of the square. A trumpet call is played from the taller one every hour, four times over, and cut off mid phrase. Inside is Veit Stoss's limewood altarpiece of 1477 to 1489, opened each day at noon.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner off the square

    Eat

    Order zurek, the sour rye soup with sausage and half an egg, and then anything with duck. Prices two streets back are half what they are on the square.

Day 5 in Kraków

The castle rock, the royal crypt and a ring of park where the walls were

Wawel is a limestone rock above a bend in the Vistula with a cathedral and a palace on top, and it has been the symbolic centre of the country for a thousand years. Go early: the tickets for each part are limited by the hour and the palace slots go by mid morning in summer.

The cathedral is where the kings were crowned for four hundred years and where most of them are buried, in chapels stuck on over six centuries so that no two match. The gilded dome on the south side, finished in 1533, is the best Renaissance building north of the Alps. In the tower hangs a bell of 1520 that needs a dozen people pulling on ropes and is rung perhaps a handful of times a year.

The palace courtyard is Italian, three tiers of arcades built by craftsmen brought from Florence in the 1500s, and the state rooms upstairs hold a set of Flemish tapestries commissioned for this building and returned to it after a journey through Romania, France and Canada during the last war.

In the evening walk the ring. When Krakow pulled down its walls in the 1820s it planted a park on the line instead of building a boulevard, so four kilometres of trees and gravel loop right round the old town, about forty minutes at a stroll, passing the one surviving gate and a round brick barbican of 1499.

  1. 09:00

    Wawel

    Historic

    The castle hill above the Vistula: a Renaissance palace round an arcaded courtyard, state rooms hung with Flemish tapestries, an armoury and the crown treasury. Separate timed tickets per section, limited per hour, sold out by late morning in summer. The grounds are free.

  2. 11:45

    Wawel Cathedral

    Religious

    The coronation and burial church of Poland, with chapels from six centuries hung on a Gothic core and a gilded Renaissance dome of the 1530s on the south side. Kings, poets and national heroes lie in the crypt below. The 1520 bell in the tower takes a dozen people to ring.

  3. 13:30

    Lunch below the hill

    Eat

    Walk down the ramp towards Stradom and eat there rather than at the foot of the castle, where the coach trade sets the prices.

  4. 17:00

    Planty

    Historic

    Four kilometres of park laid out in the 1820s on the line of the demolished walls, wrapping the old town completely. Forty minutes at a walk, benches all the way, passing the surviving gate and the barbican on the north side.

With more time: The university's oldest building is inside the ring, a Gothic quadrangle around an arcaded courtyard where Copernicus was a student in the 1490s. Guided visits only, and the clock in the courtyard puts on a small procession several times a day.

Day 6 in Kraków

Kazimierz, the oldest synagogue in Poland, and the pharmacy in the ghetto

Kazimierz was founded in 1335 as a separate royal town and became the Jewish quarter of Krakow for five hundred years. About sixty thousand Jews lived in the city in 1939. A few thousand were alive here in 1945. Seven synagogues survive within a few streets, several of them working, and the quarter around them is now where Krakow stays up latest, which is a strange and not unwelcome combination.

The synagogue on Szeroka is the oldest surviving in Poland, a brick hall begun in the fifteenth century and rebuilt in the Renaissance manner by an Italian, wrecked in the occupation and now the city's museum of Jewish Krakow. The iron cage around the reader's platform in the middle is the thing you will remember.

In the afternoon cross the river to Podgorze, which is where the ghetto was. The square at its heart now holds seventy empty steel chairs, standing for the furniture left behind when it was cleared. On the corner is a chemist's shop run through the whole period by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the only Pole permitted to live and work inside the ghetto, who used it as a message drop, a hiding place and a source of medicine, and it is now a small and very good museum.

Walk back over the footbridge in the evening and eat in Kazimierz.

  1. 09:30

    Kazimierz

    Visit

    A separate royal town from 1335 and the Jewish quarter of Krakow for five centuries, now the district with the best bars and the last empty lots. Seven surviving synagogues stand within a few hundred metres of each other around Szeroka.

  2. 11:15

    Old Synagogue

    Religious

    The oldest surviving synagogue in Poland, begun in the fifteenth century and rebuilt in Renaissance form in the 1570s, stripped by the occupiers and now the museum of Jewish Krakow. The wrought-iron cage around the central platform is original.

  3. 12:45

    Lunch on Plac Nowy

    Eat

    The round brick building in the middle of the square sells zapiekanka, an open baguette with mushrooms and cheese, out of hatches around the outside. A few zloty, and the local hangover cure.

  4. 14:00

    Under the Eagle Pharmacy

    Visit

    The chemist's shop on the ghetto square, run through the occupation by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the only Pole allowed to live and work inside the ghetto. Now a small museum reconstructed as the shop was. Half an hour, and it lands hard.

With more time: The enamel works Oskar Schindler ran are ten minutes east of the ghetto square and are now a museum of Krakow under occupation rather than a museum about him. It takes two hours and needs a ticket booked two or three days ahead.

Day 7 in Košice

Over the Carpathian foothills to a city that changed country twice

The coach south is the one genuinely awkward leg of the fifteen days, and it is still only four and a half hours, over the foothills through Nowy Sacz and across the border at Mniszek. Sit on the right for the mountains.

Kosice was Kassa, the second city of the kingdom of Hungary, until the borders were redrawn in 1920. It was handed back to Hungary in 1938 and taken away again in 1945, and its population is still substantially Hungarian and Roma as well as Slovak. Almost nobody on a central European trip comes here, which is exactly why it is on this one.

The main street is a long spindle, wide in the middle and narrow at both ends, lined with pastel palaces, and it is one of the pleasantest streets in this part of Europe to arrive on. In the middle of it stands the cathedral: begun around 1378, and the furthest east that Gothic cathedral building reached in Europe. Ferenc Rakoczi, who led the Hungarian rising of 1703 and died in exile in Turkey, was brought home and buried in the crypt in 1906.

The tower beside it is a fifteenth-century bell tower standing on its own, and between them a fountain plays to music in the evenings, which the city built in 1986 and is unreasonably fond of.

  1. 08:30

    Coach to Kosice

    Travel

    Krakow's main bus station, beside the railway station, to Kosice bus station, four and a half to five hours over the foothills. Several a day, cheap, and worth booking online the day before.

  2. 14:00

    Late lunch on Hlavna

    Eat

    Drop the bag and eat on the main street, where the terraces cost about a third of Krakow's. Bryndzove halusky, potato dumplings with sheep's cheese, is the thing to order once.

  3. 15:30

    St Elizabeth's Cathedral

    Religious

    Begun around 1378 and the largest church in Slovakia. Rakoczi lies in the crypt, brought back from Turkey in 1906. Small charge for the crypt and the tower. Small charge for the crypt and the tower.

  4. 17:00

    Saint Urban's tower

    Architecture

    A free-standing Gothic bell tower beside the cathedral, from about 1400, with Roman tombstones set into the outside wall and a bell recast after a fire. The arcade around it is now a small lapidarium.

  5. 18:00

    Singing fountain

    Other

    A musical fountain of 1986 in front of the state theatre, which plays on the hour on warm evenings while the whole city walks past it. Free, faintly ridiculous, and the best place to watch Kosice being itself.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner and a drink

    Eat

    The courtyards off the main street have been turned into bars over the last decade and the city was a European Capital of Culture in 2013, which is when most of that started. Beer costs about two euros.

Day 8 in Košice

Three thousand gold coins, a bastion with a Turkish house behind it, and a synagogue that is still open

In 1935, builders working on a house on the main street broke into a walled recess and found a copper-bound chest containing 2,920 gold coins, three gold chains and a Renaissance gold cup, hidden in the seventeenth century and never collected. It weighs about eleven kilograms and it is in the museum at the top of the street, in its own vault, and it is worth the walk on its own.

Behind the museum stands the only surviving piece of the city walls, a squat round gun bastion with the executioner's house beside it, and behind that something unexpected: a full-size replica of the house in which Ferenc Rakoczi lived out his exile at Rodosto on the Sea of Marmara, furnished as it was, built here in 1943 when his memory was politically useful.

In the afternoon, the synagogue on Puskinova. It was built in 1926 for a community of some twelve thousand people, almost all of whom were deported in the spring of 1944 in the space of a few weeks. It was returned, restored in 2007 and is still in use by a congregation now numbering a few dozen. Ring the bell.

Then walk the main street from end to end in the evening, which is what everybody here does.

  1. 09:30

    East Slovak Museum

    Culture

    Founded in 1872 and one of the oldest museums in Slovakia. Its vault holds the Kosice gold treasure: 2,920 coins, three chains and a Renaissance cup, walled up in the seventeenth century and found by builders in 1935.

  2. 11:30

    Executioner's bastion and Rodosto

    Culture

    The one surviving piece of the town walls, a round artillery bastion with the executioner's house against it, and behind them a full-size copy of the house in Turkey where Ferenc Rakoczi lived in exile, furnished as it was.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch off the main street

    Eat

    The lunch menus in the side streets run to about six euros for two courses, which after Poland still feels like a mistake in your favour.

  4. 14:30

    New orthodox synagogue

    Religious

    Built in 1926 for a community of some 12,000 people, nearly all of whom were deported in the spring of 1944. Restored in 2007 and still in use by a congregation of a few dozen. Ring the bell at the gate; opening hours are informal.

With more time: Under the pavement halfway up the main street is an excavated section of the medieval lower gate, with the old drawbridge foundations and a stretch of the water channel, reached by a staircase from the street and easy to walk over without noticing.

Day 9 in Budapest

Down to Budapest, iron shoes on the embankment and a night at the opera

Three and a half hours south through Miskolc and the Hungarian plain, arriving at Keleti, a station of 1884 with a glass roof and a good deal of soot. The metro reaches the middle of Pest in ten minutes.

Go to the river first. A few hundred metres north of the chain bridge, sixty pairs of iron shoes stand at the water's edge, cast in 1940s styles and bolted to the stone. In the winter of 1944 and 1945 Arrow Cross militia brought Jewish Hungarians to this spot, made them take off their shoes because leather was worth money, and shot them into the Danube. The memorial went up in 2005 and is the quietest place in a loud city.

The parliament along the embankment is 268 metres of neo-Gothic finished in 1904, with a dome 96 metres high because the country was founded in 896. The guided tour takes forty-five minutes, goes up the main staircase and past the Holy Crown of Hungary, and sells out days ahead in summer.

In the evening, the opera house on Andrassy. It opened in 1884, closed for six years of restoration and reopened in 2022 gilded to within an inch of its life, and the cheap seats cost less than a pizza. If nothing is on, the building runs tours.

  1. 09:00

    Train to Budapest

    Travel

    Kosice to Budapest Keleti, about three and a half hours, direct, every couple of hours. No reservation needed outside Friday and Sunday.

  2. 13:15

    Late lunch in the fifth district

    Eat

    Eat near Vorosmarty ter but not on it. One street back does a two-course lunch for the price of a coffee on the square.

  3. 15:00

    Shoes on the Danube memorial

    Historic

    Sixty pairs of iron shoes cast in 1940s styles and fixed to the embankment where Arrow Cross militia shot Jewish Hungarians into the river in the winter of 1944. Installed in 2005 by Gyula Pauer and Can Togay. Free, exposed and unmarked.

  4. 16:00

    Parliament

    Visit

    268 metres of neo-Gothic along the embankment, finished in 1904, with a dome 96 metres high in a nod to the year 896. Guided tours in English take 45 minutes, pass the Holy Crown and sell out days ahead in summer.

  5. 18:30

    State Opera or Hungarian State Opera House

    Visit

    Miklos Ybl's opera house of 1884 on Andrassy, reopened in 2022 after six years of restoration, with a three-tonne chandelier and frescoes by Lotz. Upper seats cost less than dinner; the building runs tours on days with no performance.

Day 10 in Budapest

The Buda hill, Hungarian painting and a walk along the ridge at sunset

Cross to Buda in the morning. The hill is a limestone ridge with a rebuilt medieval quarter along the top, reached by a funicular of 1870 from the bridgehead or on foot up a zigzag in twenty minutes.

The palace at the southern end holds the national gallery, and this is the one place on the whole route to see what Hungarian painters were doing while the rest of Europe was not looking: Munkacsy's enormous dark canvases, Csontvary's strange visionary landscapes, and a wing of Gothic winged altarpieces brought down from village churches in what is now Slovakia, which after two days in Kosice will look familiar.

The church at the top of the hill has been rebuilt so often that dating it is a matter of preference: a Gothic core, a Turkish century as a mosque, and a nineteenth-century restoration that gave it the diamond-patterned Zsolnay tile roof everyone photographs. Two Habsburgs were crowned kings of Hungary in it, in 1867 and 1916.

In the late afternoon walk south along the ridge and up the next hill, which rises 140 metres straight out of the river. The fort on top has been shrouded in scaffolding for years; what you come for is the terrace, the bronze woman holding a palm leaf who has stood up there since 1947, and the whole city laid out below at sunset.

  1. 09:30

    Hungarian National Gallery

    Culture

    The national collection in the Buda palace: Munkacsy's huge dark canvases, Csontvary's visionary landscapes, and a wing of Gothic winged altarpieces taken from village churches across the old kingdom. Two hours, and the dome terrace is a separate small ticket.

  2. 12:30

    Matthias Church

    Religious

    Gothic at the core, a mosque under Ottoman rule, and given its patterned Zsolnay tile roof in Schulek's restoration of 1874 to 1896. Franz Joseph was crowned here in 1867 and Charles, the last of them, in 1916. Modest dress and a small charge.

  3. 14:00

    Lunch below the walls

    Eat

    The restaurants on the castle streets are priced for the coach trade. Walk down the Vienna Gate side into Vizivaros, where the same lunch costs half.

  4. 16:30

    Gellért Hill

    Nature

    A limestone hill rising 140 metres straight out of the Danube, half an hour up on foot through woodland paths from the Elisabeth bridge. The terrace at the top takes in the whole river, and the bronze woman with the palm leaf has been there since 1947.

Day 11 in Budapest

The largest synagogue in Europe, a field of discarded statues and a long soak

Start in the seventh district, at a synagogue built in 1859 in a Moorish style for a congregation that wanted to look both Hungarian and modern, seating close to three thousand and the largest in Europe. Behind it is a garden that is also a mass grave: about two thousand people who died in the ghetto in the winter of 1944 are buried under the lawn, and a steel weeping willow stands over them with a name on every leaf.

In the middle of the day take the bus out to the edge of the city, where forty-odd statues of Lenin, Marx, Hungarian party leaders and heroic workers stand in a field. When the system fell in 1989 the councils pulled the monuments off their plinths, and rather than melting them down somebody had the sense to collect them here and open the place in 1993. There are no explanatory heroics: the statues stand on gravel in the sun, enormous and pointless, which turns out to be the most effective thing that could be done with them.

Come back into town and spend the last of the day in hot water. The baths under the Buda hill are art nouveau from 1918, tiled floor to ceiling in blue and green, calmer than the enormous yellow ones in the park and with a glass-roofed hall that is worth the entry by itself. Take flip-flops and a towel or hire them at the door.

  1. 09:30

    Great Synagogue and the Jewish Museum

    Visit

    The largest synagogue in Europe, finished in 1859, seating nearly 3,000, with a museum next door on the site of Theodor Herzl's birthplace. The garden behind holds about 2,000 graves from the winter of the ghetto and a steel willow inscribed with their names.

  2. 11:30

    Early lunch before the bus

    Eat

    The Jewish quarter around Kazinczy utca is the best eating in Budapest, from Israeli grills to old-fashioned Hungarian dining rooms. Eat here before heading out.

  3. 13:00

    Memento Park

    Nature

    Forty-odd Communist monuments pulled off their plinths after 1989 and collected in a field on the edge of the city, opened in 1993. No commentary, no plinths, just Lenin and Marx on gravel in the sun. A direct bus runs from Deak ter; allow half a day.

  4. 17:00

    Gellért Baths

    Leisure

    Art nouveau baths of 1918 on the Buda side, tiled in blue and green Zsolnay ceramics, with a glass-roofed main hall and an outdoor pool behind. Quieter than the big ones in the park. Flip-flops and a towel, or hire both at the desk.

Day 12 in Vienna

The railjet to Vienna, a cathedral and the flat where Figaro was written

Two hours forty on the fast train, past Gyor and over the border, and Vienna arrives. Wien Hauptbahnhof is ten minutes on the underground from the middle of the city.

Start at the cathedral. Its south tower is 136 metres of pierced Gothic stonework, the roof carries 230,000 glazed tiles laid in chevrons with a double eagle picked out in them, and the whole thing burned in April 1945 when fire spread from nearby shops. It was rebuilt within seven years, largely by public subscription, with each Austrian province paying for a piece.

Then round the corner, into a plain house on a narrow lane. Mozart lived on the first floor from 1784 to 1787, in the largest and most expensive flat he ever rented, at the height of his success, and wrote The Marriage of Figaro in it. It is the only one of his eleven Vienna addresses still standing, and the rooms are almost bare.

Finish in the park behind the ring, laid out in 1823 as the first public garden in Vienna and planted with three thousand rose bushes and a full-size Greek temple built to hold one statue.

  1. 09:00

    Train to Vienna

    Travel

    Budapest Keleti to Wien Hauptbahnhof, two hours forty, twice an hour on the railjet. Advance fares are a fraction of the walk-up price.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch in the first district

    Eat

    Drop the bag, then avoid the lanes immediately behind the cathedral, which are all schnitzel at tourist prices. Walk five minutes in any direction for the same food at two thirds.

  3. 14:30

    Stephansdom

    Religious

    The Gothic cathedral at the centre of the city, its south tower 136 metres and its roof carrying 230,000 glazed tiles with a double eagle in them. It burned in April 1945 and was rebuilt in seven years, each province paying for a part. Free at the back of the nave.

  4. 16:00

    Mozarthaus Vienna

    Culture

    The first floor flat Mozart rented from 1784 to 1787, the grandest he ever had, where he wrote The Marriage of Figaro. The one address of his that survives in the city. Almost nothing is left inside and the audio guide carries it.

  5. 18:00

    Volksgarten

    Leisure

    Vienna's first public park, opened in 1823 on the site of fortifications Napoleon blew up, with 3,000 rose bushes and a full-size Greek temple built to house a single sculpture. Free, and the benches face the sunset.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner in the seventh district

    Eat

    Neubau, behind the museum quarter, is where Vienna eats without performing: small rooms, wine by the quarter litre and no dress code.

Day 13 in Vienna

Bruegel, the city's own museum, and standing places at the opera

The Habsburg picture collection is in a palace built for it in 1891, and it holds more Bruegel panels than anywhere else on earth: twelve of them in one room, including the hunters coming home over the snow. There is also Vermeer's painter at work, a wall of Velazquez portraits of Spanish infantas sent north as marriage prospects, and a room of Arcimboldo heads made of vegetables. Two hours, and the cafe under the dome is worth the stop.

In the afternoon, the museum the city runs about itself, reopened at the end of 2023 after four years shut. The permanent collection is free. It runs from Roman Vindobona through the Turkish sieges to Red Vienna and the war, with the original Gothic sculpture off the cathedral, Klimt and Schiele in the top rooms, and a section on the 1930s that does not flatter anybody.

Then queue for standing places at the opera. They go on sale ninety minutes before the curtain at a separate door, cost less than a plate of pasta, and cannot be bought in advance. You get three hours of one of the great orchestras from a rail at the back, with a small screen showing the words, and a strip of velvet to tie a scarf to so nobody takes your spot in the interval.

  1. 09:30

    Kunsthistorisches Museum

    Culture

    The Habsburg pictures in a palace built for them in 1891: twelve Bruegels in one room, Vermeer's painter in his studio, Velazquez, Titian and Arcimboldo's vegetable heads. Two hours minimum, and the cafe under the dome is part of the experience.

  2. 12:15

    Lunch on the Museumsplatz

    Eat

    The courtyards of the museum quarter across the road have benches, cheap counters and a great many students, which after two hours of Habsburgs is the point.

  3. 14:00

    Wien Museum Karlsplatz

    Culture

    The city's own museum on Karlsplatz, reopened in December 2023 after four years closed, free for the permanent collection. Roman Vienna, the Turkish sieges, Red Vienna, and Klimt and Schiele upstairs. Two hours and no queue.

  4. 18:00

    Wiener Staatsoper

    Culture

    One of the great orchestras in Europe, in the pit, most nights of the season. Standing places go on sale at a side door ninety minutes before curtain, cost under twenty euros and are never sold online. Bring a scarf to tie to the rail.

Day 14 in Vienna

Schoenbrunn in the morning, and the hill the Poles came down

Schoenbrunn is fifteen minutes out on the underground and worth being at by nine. It has 1,441 rooms, of which the standard tour shows about forty, and the reason to go early is that the state rooms are narrow and one coach party fills them entirely. Behind the palace the gardens climb to a colonnade on the ridge, free to walk up, with the whole city below.

Then take the afternoon and go north. A tram and a bus get you to the top of the wooded hill above the city, 484 metres, looking straight down the Danube.

On the morning of 12 September 1683 the relief army assembled up here after crossing the river in the night. Vienna had been under Ottoman siege for two months and the walls were being mined. Mass was said in the chapel on the summit, and in the afternoon the army came down through these vineyards, with the Polish cavalry on this wing under Jan Sobieski, and the siege broke before dark. The chapel is still there and is looked after by Polish priests, which after fourteen days on the road from Warsaw is a neat piece of symmetry.

Walk or ride down into the wine villages on the slope below and find a Heuriger, a grower's tavern that is allowed to sell its own wine by the glass. Order a quarter litre, take cold food from the counter by weight, and stay until the light goes.

  1. 09:00

    Schönbrunn Palace

    Historic

    The Habsburg summer palace, of whose 1,441 rooms the Grand Tour shows about forty, plus formal gardens, a maze and a colonnade on the ridge behind with the best free view in Vienna. Timed tickets; take a nine o'clock slot in summer.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch before heading north

    Eat

    Eat lightly. The evening on the hill is a long one and the food at a Heuriger is bought by weight at a counter.

  3. 14:00

    Kahlenberg

    Nature

    The wooded hill above the city at 484 metres, where the relief army mustered on 12 September 1683 before breaking the Ottoman siege that afternoon. The summit chapel is looked after by Polish priests. Tram D and bus 38A, about forty minutes from the ring.

  4. 18:30

    A Heuriger in the wine villages

    Eat

    Growers on the slope below sell their own wine by the quarter litre with cold food from a counter. Look for the pine branch hung over the door, which means this year's wine is open.

Day 15 in Vienna

The family that ran all of it, in metal boxes

One last half hour, and it closes the whole route. Under a plain church on a small square in the middle of Vienna lie a hundred and fifty Habsburgs, in metal coffins, from 1633 to the present day. Three of the five cities on this journey were governed from a desk belonging to somebody down here.

The coffins run from stark iron boxes to a double sarcophagus the size of a car in which Maria Theresa lies beside her husband, surrounded by skulls in crowns. Their hearts are in one church nearby and their internal organs in another, which was the arrangement, and nobody in the crypt makes anything of it.

Then out. The train to the airport leaves from Wien Mitte and takes sixteen minutes on the express or twenty-five on the ordinary line for a third of the money. Munich is four hours west by rail, Prague four north, and Warsaw, where this started, is a night train away.

  1. 09:30

    Kaisergruft

    Other

    The Capuchin crypt, where 150 Habsburgs have been buried since 1633, from plain iron caskets to Maria Theresa's enormous double tomb. Cheap, cold, rarely busy, and about forty-five minutes.

  2. 10:45

    A last coffee

    Eat

    Order a Melange, take a newspaper off the rack and sit for as long as the flight allows. Nobody will hurry you and the bill comes when you ask for it.

  3. 13:00

    To the airport or onward

    Travel

    The airport train runs from Wien Mitte in sixteen minutes; the ordinary S-Bahn takes twenty-five and costs a third as much. For onward rail, Munich is four hours west and Prague four north.

Before you go

The four journeys

Warsaw to Krakow is two hours twenty on a Polish express, hourly, with numbered seats. Book a few days ahead for the cheap fare.

Krakow to Kosice is the awkward one and the only leg without a good train. The direct coaches take four and a half to five hours over the Carpathian foothills, run several times a day, and leave from the main bus station beside Krakow Glowny. Book online; they are comfortable and cost very little.

Kosice to Budapest is a direct intercity of about three and a half hours through Miskolc, running every couple of hours, arriving at Budapest Keleti. Budapest to Vienna is two hours forty on a railjet, twice an hour, and is the fastest leg of the trip by a distance.

Four currencies, and none of them the same

Polish zloty, Slovak euros, Hungarian forint, Austrian euros. Cards work everywhere including on buses and at market stalls; keep a small amount of cash in Poland and Hungary for churches, cloakrooms and public toilets.

The price range across the fifteen days is wide. Kosice and Budapest are the cheapest, Krakow and Warsaw are middling, and Vienna is roughly double either. Plan the eating budget with that in mind and do the good restaurant meals in the middle of the trip.

What to book, and when

Four things: the Warsaw Rising Museum and the Polin museum, both of which sell timed entry and fill at weekends; the Hungarian parliament tour, which sells out days ahead in summer; and the Krakow to Kosice coach.

Everything else takes walk-ins, including the Vienna opera, whose standing places go on sale ninety minutes before the curtain and cannot be bought in advance at all. If you want to add Auschwitz from Krakow, that needs its own booked slot a month ahead in summer and a whole extra day.

When to come

May, June and September. This is a continental band of Europe with hot summers and hard winters, and the shoulder months give long evenings without the August heat in Budapest or the crowds in Krakow.

There is a real winter argument, and it is Budapest's outdoor thermal pools at two degrees plus five Christmas markets in five cities. It is also dark by four in December and Kosice can sit below minus ten for a week.

Eating and drinking

Poland: pierogi, sour rye soup and the milk bars, subsidised canteens left over from the Communist period and still open, where three courses cost less than a coffee in Vienna. Slovakia: sheep's cheese with potato dumplings, which sounds worse than it is. Hungary: paprika in everything, and the best value restaurant cooking on the route.

Then Austria, where the prices double and the coffee house is a room you rent for two hours by buying one cup. Order it by name, take a newspaper off the rack and do not apologise for staying.

A thousand kilometres, four countries, one coach and four trains. Warsaw was destroyed and rebuilt from paintings, Krakow was not touched and is full because of it, Kosice changed country twice while standing still, Budapest is the one people extend, and Vienna, which was never knocked down at all, sits at the end with the imperial furniture intact.

Go in May, June or September, book the coach and the four museums before you leave, and save the hill above Vienna for the last afternoon.

Go deeper on one city

Each of these covers a single stop on this route in its own right.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is the Krakow to Kosice coach really the best way?
It is the only sensible way. The rail route between them involves two or three changes at small border stations and takes eight hours or more; the coach is direct, takes four and a half to five, and costs about ten euros. Book online the day before and sit on the right for the Carpathian foothills. It is the one leg of the trip that is transport rather than pleasure.
Why Kosice rather than Bratislava?
Because Bratislava is an hour from Vienna and belongs on a different trip, and because Kosice is on the line this route actually takes. It also does something none of the other four cities does: it has been Hungarian, Czechoslovak, Hungarian again and Slovak without ever moving, and its main street shows all of it. If you want Bratislava as well, stop there on the last leg between Budapest and Vienna.
Could I add Auschwitz?
Yes, from Krakow, and it needs a fourth night there rather than being squeezed into an existing day. Oswiecim is about ninety minutes away by bus or train, entry is free, and the guided slots that everyone needs in summer go a month or more ahead. Book directly with the memorial rather than through an agency on the Krakow main square.
Fifteen days is a lot. Where would I cut two?
Take one night off Warsaw and one off Vienna, in that order. Warsaw's two great museums fit into two days if you accept a compressed old town, and Vienna at two nights still gives you the cathedral, the picture gallery and one evening. Do not cut Kosice to one night, because half of that would be spent on the coach, and do not cut Budapest at all.
Can I copy this and change it?
Yes. The usual edits are running it in reverse from Vienna, adding two nights in the Slovak High Tatras between Krakow and Kosice, or dropping Warsaw and starting in Krakow for an eleven day version that loses very little.