Explore Budapest

The Széchenyi Chain Bridge was the first permanent bridge across the Danube in Hungary, designed by William Tierney Clark, built under Adam Clark and opened in 1849. Its two stone towers carry a 202-metre central span between Széchenyi tér in Pest and Clark Ádám tér in Buda, guarded by stone lions from 1852. A renovation closed it from 2021 to 2023.

The Hungarian National Gallery is the national collection of Hungarian art, founded in 1957 and housed since 1975 in wings of the Buda Castle palace. It shows Hungarian art from medieval wooden altarpieces and Gothic panels through the Baroque to the 19th and 20th centuries, with works by Munkácsy, Szinyei Merse, Csontváry and Rippl-Rónai.

Buda Castle is the palace complex of the Hungarian kings on the southern tip of Castle Hill. The domed Baroque palace was built between 1749 and 1769, badly damaged in 1945 and rebuilt in simplified form; its courtyards and terraces are open to walk through, while its wings house the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the National Széchényi Library.

Fisherman's Bastion is a Neo-Romanesque terrace on Castle Hill, built between 1895 and 1902 by Frigyes Schulek on a stretch of the old Buda castle walls beside Matthias Church. Its white stone walkways run about 140 metres along the Danube side, with seven conical towers for the seven Magyar chieftains, and look out over the river to Pest and the Parliament.

Matthias Church, formally the Church of the Assumption of Buda Castle, stands on Holy Trinity Square in the Castle District beside the Fisherman's Bastion. The Gothic church was rebuilt by Frigyes Schulek between 1874 and 1896, who added the patterned tiled roof and the painted interior; it is still a working parish church.

The Shoes on the Danube Bank is a Holocaust memorial on the Pest embankment south of the Parliament, created in 2005 by Can Togay and sculptor Gyula Pauer. Sixty pairs of iron shoes stand at the water's edge in memory of the Jews shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944 and 1945.

Hospital in the Rock is a former emergency hospital and nuclear bunker in the caves beneath Buda Castle, built from 1939 and used during the 1944–45 siege of Budapest and the 1956 revolution. Now a museum, it is seen on guided tours through wards and operating theatres furnished with original equipment and wax figures.

The Hungarian Parliament Building is the seat of the National Assembly, built on the Pest bank of the Danube to designs by Imre Steindl and opened in 1902. The neo-Gothic building has a central dome and long riverside façades; visitors see the interior, including the Holy Crown, on guided tours booked by time slot in several languages.

St. Stephen's Basilica is a Roman Catholic basilica in Pest named after Stephen, the first king of Hungary, whose mummified right hand is kept inside as a relic. Built from 1851 to 1905 by József Hild, Miklós Ybl and József Kauser, it has a neo-Renaissance interior, a treasury and a panorama terrace around the dome.

The Citadella is the fortress on top of Gellért Hill, built by the Habsburg army in 1851–1854 after the 1848–49 revolution, beside the Liberty Statue of 1947. After a renovation it reopened in 2026: the park, the walkway on the walls and lookout terraces are open to all, and the western gun tower holds the exhibition The Bastion of Freedom.

The Hungarian State Opera House on Andrássy Avenue is a neo-Renaissance theatre designed by Miklós Ybl and opened in 1884, with a ceiling fresco by Károly Lotz above its horseshoe auditorium. Restored between 2017 and 2022, it stages opera and ballet, and daily guided tours show the staircase, foyers and auditorium.

The Dohány Street Synagogue is the largest synagogue in Europe, built from 1854 to 1859 in the Moorish Revival style to plans by Ludwig Förster and still used by the Neolog congregation. The complex also holds the Hungarian Jewish Museum, the Heroes' Temple, a cemetery and a Holocaust memorial garden with a metal weeping willow.

The Gellért Hill Cave holds the Cave Church, a chapel and Pauline monastery built into a natural cave above the Danube and consecrated in 1926. The communist authorities sealed it with a concrete wall in 1951; it reopened in 1989. Visitors enter through the cave mouth and tour the chapels with an audio guide.

The Hungarian National Museum, founded in 1802, occupies a neoclassical building on Múzeum körút designed by Mihály Pollack and completed in 1847. Its exhibitions trace the history, archaeology and art of Hungary from prehistory to the 20th century, and its collection includes the coronation mantle of the Hungarian kings.

The Great Market Hall is Budapest's main covered market at the Pest end of Liberty Bridge, designed by Samu Pecz and opened in 1897, with a roof of Zsolnay ceramic tiles. The ground floor holds stalls of produce, meat, paprika and salami, the basement fish and pickles, and the upper gallery food counters and handicraft stalls.

The Museum of Fine Arts stands on Heroes' Square in Budapest, in a neoclassical building designed by Albert Schickedanz and Fülöp Herzog and completed in 1906. Its collection of international art covers Egyptian and classical antiquities, European old master paintings, sculpture and graphic art; the restored Romanesque Hall reopened in 2018.

Heroes' Square is the large square at the end of Andrássy Avenue, laid out for the 1896 millennium of the Hungarian conquest. Its Millennium Monument has a 36-metre column topped by the Archangel Gabriel, the seven Magyar chieftains at its base and two colonnades of statues of Hungarian rulers; the Museum of Fine Arts and the Műcsarnok flank it.

Vajdahunyad Castle stands on an island in the City Park lake, designed by Ignác Alpár for the 1896 Millennial Exhibition and rebuilt in stone between 1904 and 1908. Its wings copy buildings from across historic Hungary, including Hunyad Castle in Transylvania; the courtyard is open to walk through and the Hungarian Agricultural Museum fills the main building.

The Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden opened in 1866 in City Park and is the oldest zoo in Hungary. Its grounds hold Art Nouveau animal houses from 1909–1912 by Kornél Neuschloss and Károly Kós, among them the Elephant House, as well as a palm house, an aquarium and the Biodome, with more than 1,000 animal species.

City Park is a public park of about 1.2 km² in Budapest's District XIV, planted with trees and walkways from 1751 and opened to the public in the early 19th century. Its main entrance is Heroes' Square; inside are Vajdahunyad Castle, the Széchenyi Baths, the zoo, the Museum of Ethnography, the House of Music and a lake used as an ice rink in winter.