43 Best Sights in Hungary

This fascinating complex comprises the reconstructed, extremely evocative remains of a Roman settlement dating from the first century AD. Careful excavations have unearthed a varied selection of artifacts and mosaics, providing a tantalizing inkling of what life was like in the provinces of the Roman Empire. A gymnasium and a central heating system have been unearthed, along with the ruins of two baths and a shrine once operated by the mysterious cult of Mithras. The Aquincum múzeum (Aquincum Museum) displays the dig's most notable finds: ceramics; a red-marble sarcophagus showing a triton and flying Eros on one side and on the other, Telesphorus, the angel of death, depicted as a hooded dwarf; and jewelry from a Roman lady's tomb. There are reconstructed Roman board games, interactive video games, and a reconstruction of an ancient Roman musical organ in the basement level. The museum also manages the Thermae Maiores or 'Great Bath' complex as part of the Roman Baths Museum, an ancient spa now incongruously located in a pedestrian underpass by Flórián tér station. It's free to visit.

Eger Vár was built after the devastating Tatar invasion of 1241–42. When Béla IV returned from exile in Italy, he ordered the erection of mighty fortresses like those he had seen in the West. Within the castle walls an imposing Romanesque cathedral was built and then, during the 15th century, rebuilt in Gothic style; today only its foundations remain. Inside the foundation area, a statue of Szent István (St. Stephen), erected in 1900, looks out benignly over the city. Nearby are catacombs that were built in the second half of the 16th century by Italian engineers. By racing back and forth through this labyrinth of underground tunnels and appearing at various ends of the castle, the hundreds of defenders tricked the attacking Turks into thinking there were thousands of them. The Gothic-style Püspök Ház (Bishop's House) contains the castle history museum and, in the basement, a numismatics museum where coins can be minted and certified (in English). Also here are an art gallery displaying Italian and Dutch Renaissance works; a prison exhibit, near the main entrance; and a wax museum, depicting characters from the Hungarian historical novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon, about Hungary's final expulsion of the Turks. Videotaping and picture-taking are not allowed inside the museums, but are okay (at no charge) on the castle grounds.

Crowning the top of a 1,148-foot hill, Visegrád's dramatic citadel was built in the 13th century and served as the seat of Hungarian kings in the early 14th century. In the Middle Ages, this was where the Holy Crown and other royal regalia were kept, until they were stolen by a dishonorable maid of honor in 1440; 23 years later King Matthias had to pay 80,000 HUF to retrieve them from Austria. Today, the crown is safe and sound in Budapest's Parliament building. There are some interesting exhibits and artifacts inside the castle, including coats of arms, hunting trophies, models of the castle through history, and waxwork recreations of Renaissance feasts and balls, but most people's abiding memory of the site is the breathtaking views it offers of the Danube Bend below. It's certainly ample reward for the strenuous 40-minute hike up, which starts from the back gate of Salamon Tower. Then again, you can always drive up the hill from the center of Visegrád in five minutes and park (for a fee).

Only interested in the view? Come after 6 pm for free access to the terrace.

At the foot of Gellért Hill, the gorgeous Gellért Baths has beauty and history in spades, with hot springs that have supplied curative baths for nearly 2,000 years. The entrance to the spa is on a side street to the right of the palatial Danubius Hotel Gellért, although the pair are no longer run by the same company. These baths are unsurprisingly popular among tourists so you will want to book ahead online. Budapest's baths, once segregated, are now primarily co-ed (with special hours for segregated bathing for some baths), and it's the same story here. Men and women can now use all steam and sauna rooms as well as both the indoor pool and the outdoor wave pool—a Jazz Age classic that claims to be one of the first wave pools in the world—at the same time. Come for the lovely tiles, architecture, and painted glass, and stay for the range of treatments (some of which require a doctor's prescription).

On the 60th anniversary of the closing off of Budapest's Jewish ghetto, April 15, 2004, Hungary's first major center for Holocaust research and exhibits opened in the presence of Hungarian statesmen and the Israeli president. The stone facade of this one-time synagogue is an eerily high, windowless wall; the entrance comprises two tall, massive iron doors. Just inside the courtyard is a black wall bearing the names of all known Hungarian victims of the Holocaust, including both Jews and many Roma (Gypsies). From there you go downstairs into a cellar, where you proceed through a compelling and haunting blend of family and individual stories told through photos, films, original documents, personal objects, and touch-screen computers (with all text also in English). You are taken from 1938, when the Hungarian state first began depriving Jews and others of their rights; to 1944, by which time these people were being systematically deprived of their freedom and their lives; to liberation in 1945.

On reaching the final space, a small synagogue, you can still hear the wedding music from the first rooms: a poignant reminder of the pre-Holocaust era. Unlike the Terror háza (House of Terror), which honors victims of both Nazism and communism, nothing at all about this feels forced. It is just right. This is a moving and dignified testament to genocide.

The permanent collection here takes you on a stimulating journey into the everyday Hungarian experience, from the recent to the more distant past. Among the highlights are the 20th-century exhibit, including an early movie theater replete with films of the era, an old schoolroom, a 1960s apartment interior, and a host of historical posters—all of which brings you right up to the end of communism and the much-celebrated exodus of Russian troops. Older attractions including masterworks of cabinetmaking and woodcarving (e.g., church pews from Nyírbátor and Transylvania); a piano that belonged to both Beethoven and Liszt; and goldsmithing treasures. The museum often hosts interesting temporary installations as well, such as the World Press Photo exhibition housed here every fall.

This bath on the riverbank boasts perhaps the most damatically beautiful interior of all of Budapest's baths, with the original Turkish pool the star of the show. A high, domed roof admits pinpricks of bluish-green light into the dark, circular stone hall with its austere columns and arches. The central octagonal pool catches the light from the glass-tiled cupola and casts it around the surrounding six pools, capturing the feeling of an ancient Turkish hammam. The Rudas's highly fluoridated waters have been known for 1,000 years---and the baths themselves date back to the 16th century. The baths vary in temperature from 16 to 42 degrees Celsius, and you can also drink the water from three springs in the 'drinking hall'. The thermal part is open by day Monday and Wednesday to Friday to men only, Tuesday to women only, and weekends to both sexes. A less interesting outer swimming pool is also co-ed. A 20-minute massage costs 7000 HUF. Soak after-hours here on Friday and Saturday nights from 10 pm to 4 am.

Handsome and massive, this is one of the chief landmarks of Pest and the city's largest church—it can hold 8,500 people. Its very Holy Roman front porch greets you with a tympanum bustling with statuary. The basilica's dome and the dome of Parliament are by far the most visible in the Pest skyline, and this is no accident: with the Magyar Millennium of 1896 in mind (the lavishly celebrated thousandth anniversary of the settling of the Carpathian Basin in 896), both domes were planned to be 315 feet high and to this day city codes specify that no downtown Pest building may exceed this height.

The millennium was not yet in sight when architect József Hild began building the basilica in neoclassical style in 1851, two years after the revolution was suppressed. After Hild's death, the project was taken over in 1867 by Miklós Ybl, the architect who did the most to transform modern Pest into a monumental metropolis. Wherever he could, Ybl shifted Hild's motifs toward the neo-Renaissance mode that Ybl favored. When the dome collapsed, partly damaging the walls, he made even more drastic changes. Ybl died in 1891, five years before the 1,000-year celebration, and the basilica was completed in neo-Renaissance style by József Kauser—but not until 1905.

Below the cupola is a rich collection of late-19th-century Hungarian art: mosaics, altarpieces, and statuary (what heady days the Magyar Millennium must have meant for local talents). There are 150 kinds of marble, all from Hungary except for the Carrara in the sanctuary's centerpiece: a white statue of King (St.) Stephen I, Hungary's first king and patron saint. Stephen's mummified right hand is preserved as a relic in the Szent Jobb Kápolna (Holy Right Chapel); press a button and it will be illuminated for two minutes. You can also climb the 364 stairs (or take the elevator) to the top of the cupola for a spectacular view of the city. Extensive renovation work here has, among other things, returned the cathedral from a sooty gray to an almost bright tan. Small-group guided tours in English are offered between 9:30 and 3, but must be reserved in advance.

The grand, neoclassical Bazilika, the second-largest cathedral in Hungary, was built in the center of town early in the 19th century. It is approached by a stunning stairway flanked by statues of Sts. Stephen, László, Peter, and Paul—the work of Italian sculptor Marco Casagrande, who also carved 22 biblical reliefs inside and outside the building. Ironically, perhaps, a few yards to the left of the main steps leading up to the Bazilika—on what appears to be its property—is a popular wine bar built into the high brick wall that flanks each side of the steps. From May through September, organ recitals are held Monday through Saturday at 11:30 am and Sunday at 12:45 pm. It's best to visit when no Masses are taking place—from 9 until 6.

Just below the southern edge of the Citadella and visible from many parts of the city, the 130-foot-high Szabadság szobor (Liberty Statue) was originally planned as a memorial to a son of Hungary's then-ruler, Miklós Horthy, whose warplane had crashed in 1942. However, by the time of its completion in 1947 (three years after Horthy was ousted), it had become a memorial to the Russian soldiers who fell in the 1944–45 siege of Budapest; and hence for decades it was associated chiefly with this.

A young girl, her hair and robe swirling in the wind, holds a palm branch high above her head. During much of the communist era, and for a couple of years after its close, she was further embellished with sculptures of giants slaying dragons, Red Army soldiers, and peasants rejoicing at the freedom that Soviet liberation promised (but failed) to bring to Hungary. Since 1992 her mood has lightened: in the Budapest city government's systematic purging of communist symbols, the Red Combat infantrymen who had flanked the Liberty Statue for decades were hacked off and carted away. A few are now on display among the other evicted statues in Szobor Park in the city's 22nd district, and what remains memorializes those who fought for Hungary's freedom.

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The museum, founded in 1972, was created to honor the work of Impressionist Károly Ferenczy, and important leader in the Nagybánya Artist Colony in the late 19th century. But the museum also exhibits the work of his wife, children, and brother, all of whom were popular artists of the early modern era.

Gracing the corner of Görög utca (Greek Street) and Szentendre's main square, Fø tér, the so-called Görög templom is actually a Serbian Orthodox church that takes its name from the Greek inscription on a red-marble gravestone set in its wall. This elegant edifice was built between 1752 and 1754 by a rococo master, Andreas Mayerhoffer, on the site of a wooden church dating to the Great Serbian Migration (around AD 690). Its greatest glory—a symmetrical floor-to-ceiling panoply of stunning icons—was painted between 1802 and 1804 by Mihailo Zivkovic, a Serbian painter from Buda.

Calvin Square takes its name from the neoclassical Hungarian Reformed (Calvinist) church that tries to dominate this busy traffic hub; this is a hard task, what with the dull-as-can-be glass facade of the Kálvin Center office building across the square. The Kecskeméti Kapu, a main gate of Pest, once stood here, as well as a cattle market that was a notorious den of thieves. At the beginning of the 19th century this was where Pest ended and the prairie began.

The grandiose, imperial-looking station was built in 1884 and was considered Europe's most modern until well into the 20th century. Its neo-Renaissance facade, which resembles a gateway, is flanked by statues of two British inventors and railway pioneers, James Watt and George Stephenson.

The Kisvonat, a miniature tram on wheels that looks like a train, leaves from Dobó tér every hour on the hour for an approximately 40-minute tour of Eger's historical sights.

The museum displays the work of János Kmetty, a pioneer of Hungarian avant-garde Cubist painting.

The neighborhood to the south of Széchenyi István tér has regained much of its past elegance—if not its architectural grandeur—with the erection of several luxury hotels. Traversing past and continuing well beyond them is the riverside korzó, a pedestrian promenade lined with park benches and appealing outdoor cafés from which one can enjoy postcard-perfect views of Gellért Hill and Castle Hill directly across the Danube. Try to take a stroll in the evening, when the views are lit up in shimmering gold lights.

At the southern end of Margaret Island, the Margaret Bridge is the closer of the two island entrances for those coming from downtown Buda or Pest. Just north of the Chain Bridge, the bridge walkway provides gorgeous midriver views of Castle Hill and Parliament. The original bridge was built during the 1840s by French engineer Ernest Gouin in collaboration with Gustave Eiffel. Toward the end of 1944, the bridge was blown up by the retreating Nazis while crowded with rush-hour traffic. It was rebuilt in the same unusual shape—forming an obtuse angle in midstream, with a short leg leading down to the island—and has been refurbished in recent years, now sporting a bike path on the north-facing side that pedestrians, joggers, and bicyclists all share on their way to the island.

In the 15th century, King Matthias Corvinus had a separate, 350-room palace built on the bank of the Danube below the citadel. It was eventually razed by the Turks, and not until 1934 were the ruins finally excavated. Now, after extensive reconstruction, it's possible to visit about 20 of the rooms—including the royal bed chambers, the kitchen, and the chapel—which are spread throughout the Királyi palota (Royal Palace) and its Salamon torony (Salamon Tower). Come during summer to see medieval games and craft demonstrations.

After the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Hungarians were understandably keen to rid Budapest of the symbols of Soviet domination. The communist memorials—including huge statues of Lenin, Marx, and Hungarian puppet prime minister János Kádár—that once dotted Budapest's streets and squares have been moved to this open-air "Disneyland of Communism." Somewhat tacky but amusing souvenirs are for sale, and songs from the Hungarian and Russian workers' movements play on a tiny speaker system. To get there, take the recently completed Metro 4 to Kelenföld vasútállomás (Kelenföld train depot) then, from the adjoining bus depot, catch the 101 or 150 bus in the direction of Budatétény vasútállomás (Campona). It’s best to tell the driver when you get on that you want to get off at Memento Park. The park also operates its own bus from Deak tér daily at 11 am. There is a guided tour in English at 11:40 am daily during peak season; call ahead to confirm. You can also schedule a guide in advance for an additional fee (15,240 HUF).