Three days in Eger: the siege every Hungarian child reads about, and the wine everyone else comes for

Two nights in the northern wine hills: a baroque town centre, the castle that held out in 1552, Europe's northernmost minaret, and an evening in a valley of cellars.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Eger
Places
7 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Eger is a town of 54,000 people two hours north east of Budapest, and it is the one small Hungarian town that everybody in the country has an opinion about. In 1552 its castle held out against an Ottoman army many times the size of its garrison, and the novel written about it at the end of the nineteenth century has been on the school syllabus ever since. Hungarians arrive here already knowing the story. You will hear it four or five times in two days.

The town underneath the castle is a compact piece of eighteenth century Baroque: yellow and pink plaster, a square with a statue on it, and about a dozen churches within ten minutes of each other, most of them built in a hundred year stretch after the Turks left. The whole centre is cobbled and walkable in twenty minutes end to end.

The other reason to come is on the western edge of town, where a horseshoe of about two hundred cellars is cut into soft volcanic rock. That is where the red wine the region is known for gets drunk, at prices that will make you check the label twice. Two nights is the right length: one evening in the valley, one full day for the castle and the streets under it, and a morning before the train.

Highlights

  • A castle you climb into rather than look at, with tunnels under the walls
  • The northernmost minaret in Europe, standing alone in a Baroque street
  • A library ceiling and a working camera obscura in the same building
  • Two hundred cellar doors around one small valley on the edge of town
  • Dinner and a bottle for what a glass costs in Budapest

Where to stay

Eger, two nights

Stay inside the old town, between Dobó tér and the Basilica. Everything below is then within a ten minute walk, the valley is a short taxi ride away, and you avoid the hotels out on the ring road that look cheap until you count the trips back and forth.

The days split simply: the Baroque centre and an evening in the cellars, then the castle and the Turkish quarter, then a cellar under the Basilica before the train.

Day by day

Day 1 in Eger

The Basilica, the Lyceum, and the first evening in the valley

Arrive on a late morning train and the afternoon is enough for the two big Neoclassical buildings that face each other across Eszterházy tér, ten minutes from the station.

Then get out to the cellars while it is still light. The valley is a fifteen minute walk west, downhill, and looks like a village square that happens to be lined with cellar doors instead of houses.

  1. 14:30

    Basilica of Eger

    Religious

    The third largest church in Hungary, built between 1831 and 1836 by József Hild, who went on to design the basilica in Budapest. Neoclassical, enormous for a town this size, and free to walk into. Organ recitals most days at half past eleven in season.

  2. 15:30

    Lyceum

    Architecture

    The Baroque college opposite. Go for two rooms: the archbishop's library, with a ceiling fresco of the Council of Trent and the only handwritten Mozart letter in Hungary, and the observatory tower, where a camera obscura throws a live image of the town onto a white table in a dark room. Do the tower last.

  3. 17:30

    Szépasszony Valley

    Nature

    Around two hundred cellars cut into volcanic tuff around a single horseshoe valley, most of them family holdings, many pouring by the decilitre. Start at the far end where the crowds thin, taste as you go, and let somebody else drive you home.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner among the cellars

    Eat

    Several of the bigger cellars serve proper food, which is the sensible way to handle an evening of tasting. Otherwise eat in town first and come down for the wine alone.

With more time: If you land early, the thermal baths on the eastern edge of the centre are open all afternoon and cost a fraction of what the same water costs in Budapest.

Day 2 in Eger

The castle, the minaret and the Baroque churches

One steep morning and one flat afternoon, all of it within four hundred metres. Start at the castle gate before the school groups; by eleven the courtyard is full of them, and they are here for the same reason you are.

Coming down, the old town is small enough that you can walk past every church in it without meaning to. The two below are the ones worth going inside.

  1. 09:30

    Castle of Eger

    Historic

    The 1552 defence is the reason Hungarians come, and the exhibition in the Bishop's Palace tells it properly, siege and aftermath both. The underground casemates cut through the rock are the better half of the visit, and the ramparts give you the whole town at once. Two hours, more if you take the tunnel tour.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch on Dobó tér

    Eat

    The square below the castle is the obvious place and it is not a trap: game and river fish are the local strengths, and the set lunch menus run to about a third of evening prices.

  3. 14:00

    Minaret

    Religious

    A tapering brick column just over forty metres high, left standing in a Baroque street after the mosque at its foot was pulled down, and the northernmost medieval minaret in Europe. Ninety seven steps up a spiral so tight that people with any hesitation about enclosed spaces should admire it from the pavement.

  4. 15:00

    Saint Anton Church

    Religious

    Built for the Minorites between 1758 and 1773 to a design by Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer, the Prague architect, and the best Baroque interior in town by some distance. Chimes at eleven, three and six.

With more time: Two quieter ones if you have the afternoon: the Serbian Orthodox church on the northern edge of the centre, whose gilded icon wall is the finest of its kind in Hungary, and the house below the castle where the novelist who made the siege famous lived and is buried.

Day 3 in Eger

The cellar under the Basilica, then the train

A short last morning. The archbishops kept their wine in a tunnel system under the Basilica, and you can walk it before you leave; it is cool, it is five minutes from where you slept, and it is ten from the platform.

Trains south run roughly hourly, and the direct ones are the odd hour departures.

  1. 10:00

    Town under the town

    Culture

    The former archiepiscopal wine cellar, a long cold tunnel under the church, with a tasting at the end of it. An hour, and a reasonable thing to do at ten in the morning in a town like this one.

  2. 12:00

    To the station

    Travel

    Ten minutes downhill along Deák Ferenc út, or a town bus from the middle of the centre if you are carrying anything heavy.

With more time: With a spare day, Egerszalók is fifteen minutes west, where thermal water has built a white terrace of limestone down a hillside, and there are horse studs and gorges in the Bükk hills north of town.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Trains leave Budapest Keleti every hour. The odd hour departures run straight through in about two hours and twenty minutes; the even hour ones are quicker but need a change at Füzesabony, and the fast intercity services to that junction require a seat reservation. Buses from Budapest take a little over two hours and drop you behind the Basilica, which is more convenient than the station.

Eger railway station is a ten minute walk south of the centre: head up Deák Ferenc út until the Basilica appears. Buses 10, 11 and 12 cover the same ground. Once you are in the middle of town you will not need transport again, but leave the smooth soles at home, because most of the old centre is cobbled.

The wine, and how to get back from it

Egri Bikavér, bull's blood, is the name outsiders know: a red blend of at least three grapes, and the story tying it to the 1552 siege is a much later invention that nobody here is in a hurry to correct. The wine worth crossing the country for is the white, Egri Csillag, and the local Kékfrankos.

Cellars in the valley open from late morning and most keep going until nine or ten in summer, later at weekends. Many pour straight from the barrel by the decilitre and charge in coins. Do not drive. A tourist tram runs down from the centre in season, taxis are cheap, and the walk back up the hill is half an hour and steeper than it looked on the way down.

When to go

May to early October, with September the best of it: the harvest is on, the valley is busy in a good way, and the heat has gone out of the day. Winter is quiet and the cellars keep shorter hours, though the town in snow is worth seeing and the thermal baths make more sense then.

Most visitors come for a single day and leave before dinner, so the town belongs to whoever stayed the night from about six in the evening.

Eger rewards staying over more obviously than almost anywhere else in Hungary, because the day trippers take the atmosphere back to Budapest with them at five in the afternoon. What is left after that is a small, warm, slightly boastful town with good wine underneath it.

Come by train. The road from Budapest is dull, parking in the old town is difficult, and drinking is the point.

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

Can Eger be done as a day trip from Budapest?
It can, and thousands of people do it, but they all leave before the part that makes the town. The cellars matter in the evening, the castle wants a slow two hours, and the timetable home forces a choice between them. Two nights costs very little here.
Do I need Hungarian?
In the hotels and the museums, no. In the smaller cellars, often yes, and it does not matter: pointing at a barrel works, and somebody's daughter will usually appear with English.
Is the castle worth it if I do not know the story?
Yes, for the tunnels and the view. The exhibitions assume a little more knowledge than a foreign visitor arrives with, so read a paragraph about the 1552 siege before you go in and it all lands better.
What if two nights is one too many?
Then drop the last morning and take the early train. Copy the trip into the planner and delete the third day; nothing else moves.

Places and coordinates are drawn from Wikivoyage, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: Eger.