Five days in Budapest: built to outdo Vienna, and better company than it

Four nights on both banks of the Danube: Castle Hill, Parliament and the old Jewish quarter, Heroes' Square and City Park, and a long afternoon in the thermal baths.

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Length
5 days, 4 nights
Where you stay
Budapest
Places
13 across 5 days
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Budapest was three towns until 1873, and it still reads as two. Buda is the hilly bank: the castle, a medieval street plan, quiet by nine in the evening. Pest is flat, gridded, noisy and where you will spend most of your time. The Danube between them is 300 metres wide, and crossing it on foot is one of the better things to do here rather than a chore to be got over with.

Almost everything that makes the city look imperial was built in a rush between 1870 and 1902, when Hungary was the junior half of a dual monarchy and spending heavily to look like the senior one. The Parliament went up between 1880 and 1902, big enough to need a two metre concrete raft under the riverbank mud. Heroes' Square, the castle in City Park and the little yellow metro under Andrássy út all date from the 1896 celebrations of a thousand years since the Magyars arrived. It is a city that was dressed for a party, and the costume held.

Underneath all of it is hot water. Budapest sits on a fault line that pushes up more than a hundred thermal springs, which is why the Ottomans built bath houses here in the sixteenth century and why the Habsburg city built palaces around the same water three hundred years later. Four nights is enough to see the two banks properly, spend half a day in a pool at 38 degrees, and eat well every night without booking anything grand.

Highlights

  • The Buda bank at opening time, when Fisherman's Bastion belongs to about nine people
  • A neo-Gothic parliament you can walk into, crown jewels and all
  • Two synagogues five minutes apart, one vast and Moorish, one Art Nouveau and half hidden
  • An afternoon in an outdoor thermal pool with men playing chess in it
  • Dinner and wine for less than a main course costs in Vienna

Where to stay

Budapest, four nights

Sleep in Pest. The fifth, sixth and seventh districts put you inside walking distance of the river, the Jewish quarter and Andrássy út, and the trams and metro do the rest. Buda is lovely and steep and you would spend the week commuting down from it.

The four nights break cleanly: an arrival evening on the embankment, a Buda day on the castle hill, a Pest day for the Parliament and the synagogues, and a day that walks up Andrássy út into City Park and finishes in the water. The last morning is short, so it goes to the one climb in the city worth doing on an empty stomach.

Day by day

Day 1 in Budapest

The Pest embankment, the Chain Bridge and the shoes

Whatever time you land, the first evening belongs to the river. The Pest embankment runs from the Chain Bridge down to Erzsébet Bridge with the whole of Buda laid out on the far side, and the light at the end of the day comes from behind the castle and hits Pest square in the face.

It is about a kilometre of walking in total, flat, with somewhere to sit every fifty metres. Eat late. Hungarians do.

  1. 16:00

    Danube Promenade

    Landmark

    Start at Vörösmarty tér and walk south along the water with the castle opposite. Cafe terraces the whole way, and a Roman fort under the pavement at Március 15 tér that nobody stops to look at.

  2. 17:00

    Szechenyi Chain Bridge

    Architecture

    The first permanent bridge over the Danube here, opened in 1849 to a design by an English engineer who had built a smaller version across the Thames at Marlow. Walk out to the middle, then come back: it is the best free view in the city.

  3. 17:45

    Shoes on the Danube memorial

    Historic

    Sixty pairs of iron shoes on the stone edge of the river, left where Arrow Cross militiamen made Jewish Budapesters take them off before shooting them into the water in the winter of 1944 and 1945. Five minutes north of the bridge, and quiet.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner in the fifth district

    Eat

    Anything a street back from the water. On the river itself you are paying for the view, and the kitchen knows it.

With more time: If you arrive early enough for coffee, Gerbeaud on the square where you started has been serving it since 1858 and charges accordingly. Cheaper and better: any of the small roasters on Király utca.

Day 2 in Budapest

Fisherman's Bastion, Matthias Church and the hospital inside the hill

Castle Hill is a limestone ridge with a medieval town on top and a Baroque palace at the southern end, and it takes about four hours to see properly. Go early. By eleven the terraces are full of coach parties and the temperature on the white stone is unpleasant.

Get up by funicular from Clark Ádám tér, or walk the switchback path from Víziváros in fifteen minutes. The hill is small enough that everything below is a few streets apart, and the cobbles are hard on thin soles.

  1. 09:00

    Fisherman's Bastion

    Other

    Seven white turrets along the eastern wall, one for each Magyar tribe. It looks medieval and is not: it was finished around 1902 as a viewing terrace. The upper levels charge admission in daylight hours; the lower ones are free and the view is the same.

  2. 10:15

    Matthias Church

    Religious

    Late Gothic under a Victorian restoration that covered every interior surface in painted pattern, which sounds awful and is extraordinary. Hungarian kings were crowned here. Shoulders covered, and the tiled roof is the thing to photograph from outside.

  3. 12:00

    Lunch on the hill

    Eat

    Slim pickings up here and all of it priced for the view. Walk two streets west of the church, away from the bastion, and it improves quickly.

  4. 14:00

    Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker Museum

    Culture

    An emergency hospital dug into the caves under the castle from 1939, working flat out through the siege of Budapest with about forty staff, then converted into a nuclear bunker. Guided tour only, wear a jumper, and it is genuinely sobering rather than a novelty.

With more time: The National Gallery fills the palace wing at the far end of the hill and is the place to see nineteenth century Hungarian painting. Coming down, the terraced Neo-Renaissance arcades above the river are worth the detour, and put you at the Buda end of the Chain Bridge.

Day 3 in Budapest

Parliament, the Great Synagogue and the streets behind it

One monument in the morning and one neighbourhood in the afternoon, both in Pest and twenty minutes apart on foot.

The seventh district behind the Dohány Street synagogue was the ghetto in 1944 and stood half derelict for decades afterwards. It is now the loudest part of the city after dark, which is an uncomfortable pairing and one the neighbourhood itself argues about. Both things are true at once and you will feel it walking around.

  1. 09:30

    Parliament

    Visit

    Neo-Gothic, 270 metres of it, finished in 1902 and still the largest building in Hungary. Inside are the coronation regalia and a staircase that does not photograph. Guided tours only, in fixed language slots, and they sell out days ahead, so book online before you leave home.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch in Lipótváros

    Eat

    The grid behind Parliament is office country, which means good weekday lunch menus at about a third of evening prices.

  3. 13:30

    Great Synagogue and the Jewish Museum

    Visit

    The largest synagogue in Europe, built in the 1850s to a Moorish design by a Viennese architect, with two onion domes 43 metres high. The ticket covers the museum and the memorial garden behind. Head covering provided at the door for men.

  4. 15:30

    Kazinczy Street Synagogue

    Religious

    Five minutes away and completely different: late Secessionist, 1912, built by the Löffler brothers for the Orthodox congregation, and squeezed onto an awkward plot so that the facade does the work. Still an active synagogue, so check the visiting hours.

  5. 20:00

    The ruin bars, later

    Note

    Bars in unrenovated courtyards, the first of them opened in 2002 and the rest imitating it. Go at six for a drink and the buildings, or at midnight for the other thing. Both are fine; the middle is a scrum.

With more time: A third synagogue, on Rumbach Street, is the only building in Hungary designed by Otto Wagner and has been beautifully restored. Two minutes from the other two, and usually empty.

Day 4 in Budapest

Up Andrássy út to Heroes' Square, then City Park and the water

A straight line day: one long boulevard, a park at the end of it, and a bath house to finish. If your legs have had enough by Oktogon, the yellow metro runs directly under the avenue with a station every few blocks.

Heroes' Square at the top is where the 1896 anniversary was staged, and City Park behind it is where the party furniture was left standing.

  1. 09:30

    Andrássy Avenue

    Architecture

    Two and a half kilometres of nineteenth century boulevard from Erzsébet tér to Heroes' Square, with the Opera House on the left about a third of the way up and the plane trees closing overhead beyond Oktogon. UNESCO listed, and still a street people live on.

  2. 11:30

    Vajdahunyad Castle

    Historic

    A fake castle on an island in the park, built for the 1896 exhibition as a stage set and rebuilt in stone when the city grew fond of it. Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque wings copied from real buildings around the country, arranged so you only see one at a time.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch in the park

    Eat

    Two proper restaurants sit inside the park near the zoo, and there are kiosks by the boating lake. Eat lightly: you are about to spend three hours horizontal in warm water.

  4. 14:30

    Széchenyi Thermal Bath

    Leisure

    The big yellow one, and one of the largest bath complexes in Europe: three outdoor pools and a dozen more inside, saunas and steam rooms included in the ticket. The hot outdoor pool with the chess players is the picture everyone has seen. Three hours is not too long.

With more time: The Opera House on Andrássy út came out of a long restoration and sells same week tickets at prices that would be a misprint in London or Vienna. If art is more your thing, the museum on the left hand side of Heroes' Square holds the biggest collection of Spanish painting outside Spain.

Day 5 in Budapest

Gellért Hill on the way out

One climb, then leave. Gellért Hill rises straight out of the Buda bank and takes twenty five minutes of switchbacks from the river. It is the one place you can see the whole shape of the city at once: both banks, the bridges in a row, Parliament from directly across the water.

Bags can go in left luggage at the station or at your hotel, and the hill is close enough to the centre that you can be back down and on a train inside an hour.

  1. 09:00

    Gellért Hill

    Nature

    Named after the bishop the pagan Magyars are said to have rolled off it in a barrel in 1046. Wooded, protected parkland, UNESCO listed since 1987 along with the rest of the riverbanks, with the Liberty Statue on the summit and viewpoints on every terrace below it.

  2. 12:00

    To the station

    Travel

    Trams 47 and 49 run from the foot of the hill across the river into Pest, and the metro takes you on from there.

With more time: If the flight is late enough, the Art Nouveau bath house at the foot of the hill is the obvious way to spend the rest of the morning, and it takes bags.

Before you go

Getting around

Four metro lines, a dense tram network and buses, all on one ticket system, and a multi day travelcard pays for itself on the second day. Validate before you board or at the gate; inspectors work the metro entrances and they are not sentimental about tourists.

The line worth riding for its own sake is M1, the little yellow one that runs shallow under Andrássy út. It opened in 1896, which makes it the oldest underground railway on the European mainland, and the stations still have their original tiling and wooden trim. Trams 4 and 6 cross the river at the northern edge of the centre and run most of the night, and tram 2 along the Pest embankment gives you the castle view for the price of a ticket.

From the airport, the dedicated express bus into the centre is quicker than a taxi in the evening rush and needs its own ticket, sold at the machines by the terminal door.

The baths, and how they actually work

Bring swimwear and flip flops. Towels and robes are rented against a deposit, and you get the deposit back only if you hand in the receipt you were given at the desk, which is the single most common way visitors lose money here.

Széchenyi in City Park is the huge neo-baroque one with the outdoor pools, best in cold weather when the steam sits on the water. The Rudas keeps a sixteenth century Ottoman dome over its hot pool and feels far older and less polished. The Art Nouveau one at the foot of Gellért Hill is the prettiest room of the three. None of them is a spa in the western sense: they are municipal pools that happen to be beautiful, and locals treat them that way.

When to go, and what it costs

May, June and September are the best of it. July and August are hot and the city empties of Hungarians. Late November and December bring the Christmas markets and genuinely cold weather, which is the right weather for an outdoor thermal pool.

Hungary keeps the forint, not the euro, and card payment is accepted almost everywhere. Prices in the tourist blocks of the fifth district have caught up with western Europe; walk ten minutes east or south and they have not.

Staying safe

Budapest is a low crime city for its size, with no districts a visitor needs to avoid. Pickpocketing on packed trams and at the busiest metro interchanges is the one real risk, so carry a bag on your front in a crowd. The general emergency number is 112.

Two long running scams are worth naming: bars where a friendly stranger suggests the venue and the bill arrives at four times the menu price, and unmetered taxis hailed on the street. Book a cab through an app or ask the restaurant to call one.

The mistake visitors make here is treating Budapest as a two day stop between Vienna and Prague. Two days gets you the castle, one bath and a bad dinner near the river. Four nights gets you the other city: the sixth district on a Tuesday evening, a synagogue with nobody in it, and the walk up Andrássy út when the trees are out.

Take the trains rather than a hire car. The centre is walkable, the parking is dreadful and the country is small enough that Eger is two hours away by rail and Pécs three.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

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 four nights enough for Budapest?
Comfortably, for the two banks and the baths. A fifth and sixth night would go to the Roman town at the northern end of the city, the communist statue park in the southern suburbs, and a day trip up the Danube Bend to Szentendre or Esztergom, none of which are the reason you came.
Which bath should I pick if I only do one?
Széchenyi in City Park if you want the outdoor pools and the photograph, the Rudas if you want a sixteenth century Ottoman dome and hot water at forty degrees with far fewer people under it. Go late afternoon on a weekday; weekend mornings are the worst of it.
Do I need to book anything in advance?
Parliament, yes, several days ahead and in your language. The baths sell tickets at the door most days. Restaurants outside the top handful will take a same day booking.
Can I change the days around?
Yes, and the shape survives it. The two things worth keeping are Castle Hill first thing in the morning and the baths on the day your feet have given up. Copy the trip into the planner and drag whatever you like.