Things to Do in Budapest

The colossal Vajdahunyad Castle sits next to the boating lake amid the greenery of City Park (Városliget) and displays a joyous clash of Hungarian architectural styles. It was designed by Ignác Alpár to be a gigantic folly for the Hungarian millennium celebrations in 1896, but it was such a hit with the citizens of Budapest that it was granted a reprieve and its makeshift construction was rebuilt in stone.

Running the gamut of Romanesque to Renaissance architecture, the palace is gaily encrusted with towers, turrets, Gothic flying buttresses, portcullises, bridges and courtyards, happily borrowing features from other castles around Hungary and there are scores of neo-classical statues scattered in the grounds.

Today Budapest’s Agricultural Museum is housed among the marble stairs, ornate décor, stained glass and vast chandeliers of the palace interior. The eight permanent exhibitions include a terrifying collection of taxidermy and a vaulted gallery stuffed full of antlers. Other highlights are the informative exhibit on Hungarian wine production and the whistle-stop tour through Hungarian agriculture, but that comes to an abrupt halt in 1945 without addressing the effects of enforced Communist collectivization after WWII.

The castle courtyard is open 24 hours a day and is free to wander and admire the eclectic architecture. Church services are held on Sunday at 12 noon in the Romanesque Jak Chapel from April to September.

Please note: The Museum of Fine Arts is currently closed for renovations. The reopening is scheduled for March 2018.

Following WWII, Budapest was firmly brought under Soviet occupation and only escaped the harsh embrace of Communism in 1989, when the Iron Curtain came down across Europe and democracy was (largely) restored.

Under Communism, scores of statues celebrating Marx, Lenin and Engels were erected as propaganda tools around Budapest. They were all uniformly monumental in scale, made out of concrete and downright ugly, and were soon joined by equally vast statues of Hungarian Communist leaders Béla Kun and Arpád Szakasits as well as gigantic allegorical monuments to Soviet heroism.

When the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1989 and Hungary began to enjoy its first vestiges of independence, these monolithic reminders of years of suppression were torn down and carted off to Memento Park on the city’s south-west outskirts. Here they are displayed as a grim reminder of Communism and the Cold War along with an old Trabant and a half-destroyed statue of Lenin, which was desecrated in the 1956 rebellion.

The park is dominated by the 20-foot (six-m) statue of a wild-eyed liberation soldier, arms flung wide, hammer and sickle in his hand and gun slung around his neck; this once stood on the top of Gellért Hill and was seen as a symbol of Budapest’s repression.

Matthias Church, with the bright color of its tiled roof and its fantastic Neo-Gothic ornamentation, is one of the stand-out attractions of Castle Hill. Most of it dates from the late 19th century, but parts of the church are much older than that. It's named the Matthias Church because King Matthias I married Beatrice of Naples here in 1474.

It was here, in 1867, that Franz Liszt's Coronation Mass was first performed, and the church still has a strong musical tradition; try and catch a concert here if you can.

On the exterior of the church, check out the unusual diamond-patterned tiles of the roof and the Matthias Tower, which bears the king's crest animal, a raven with a gold ring in its beak. Also look out for the medieval columns on the bottom of the Béla Tower, with their studious monks and devilish animals. 

Inside the church you'll find rich frescoes and a legendary Madonna statue - this Virgin is said to have saved the Castle from Turkish invasion when her face, revealed by a demolished wall, frightened them into retreat.

Margit-sziget (Margaret Island) is a magical little piece of heaven poised between Buda and Pest. Being there always gives you the sense of taking some time off from the real world. It's small - only 2.5 km (1.4 mi) long - but you'd be surprised how much the island manages to pack in and still feel like an oasis. 

Margaret Island was once three islands; they were put together to stem the flow of the Danube in the 19th century. In the middle ages, Margaret Island was called the Island of Rabbits. It was named Margaret after a saint who lived in one of the many nunneries.

The Ottoman rulers kicked out the monks and nuns and took over the island for their harems. There's still plenty of lolling about and pleasure seeking to be done on the island today. It has a pool and lido, a thermal spa, concerts and a Japanese garden to help you relax. 

There's also a small zoo and a musical fountain, but just about the nicest thing to do on Margaret Island is what so many of the city's inhabitants do - bring a picnic and lie back in the flowery grass.

This beautiful neo-classical cathedral is the biggest church in Budapest and sits on the imposing square of Szent István. Its serene façade is decorated with statues of the 12 Apostles and has twin clock towers, a vast cupola and an imposing colonnaded doorway leading on to a barn-like interior illuminated through jewel-like stained-glass windows.

Among the carved wooden pews, marble statuary, frescoed ceilings and gilded ornamentation, the opulent basilica’s most holy relic is found in the small dark chapel to the left of the elaborate main altar. The mummified and bejeweled hand of St Stephen, who was both first king and patron saint of Hungary back in the ninth century, lies preserved in a delicate glass cabinet.

The basilica can accommodate 8,500 worshippers and was built during the late 19th century during the expansion of Budapest for the Millennium celebrations. Much of the later design work was by Miklós Ybl, designer of the Hungarian State Opera House. Badly damaged during WWII, the cathedral has recently been extensively restored and once more sparkles both inside and out.

Regular organ recitals are held here and the dome has a panoramic viewing point taking in the sweep of the city and Danube River; access is by elevator and steep steps.