190 Best Sights in Hungary

If you haven't had your fill of Zsolnay, make a beeline for this museum. Occupying the upper floor of the oldest surviving building in Pécs, which dates from 1324 and has been built and rebuilt over the years in Romanesque, Renaissance, and Baroque styles, this museum is a merry show-and-tell waltz through a revolution in pottery that started in 1851. That's when local merchant Miklós Zsolnay bought the site of an old kiln and set up a stoneware factory for his son Ignác to run. Ignác’s brother, Vilmos, a shopkeeper with an artistic bent, bought the factory from him in 1863, imported experts from Germany, and (with the help of a Pécs pharmacist for chemical glaze experiments and his daughters for hand-painting) created the distinctive namesake porcelain. Today, the museum's collection includes Vilmos’s early efforts at Delft-blue handmade vases, cups, and saucers; his two-layer ceramics; examples of the gold-brocade rims that became a Zsolnay trademark; and table settings for royal families. Look up on your tour to see the unusual Zsolnay chandeliers lighting the way.

If interesting transportation options like the Gyermekvasút (Children's Railway) are your thing, the Zugliget Libegő (chairlift) in the Buda Hills is also good fun. The chairlift takes passengers from Zugliget up above the treetops to the side of János Hill in about 15 minutes, all the while providing panoramic views of the Buda surroundings. It can be reached by taking Bus 291 from Nyugati station to its final stop. The lift operates from 10 am to 7 pm in summer and until 3:30 or 4 pm during the winter. Check the website for special "Night Lift" events (usually in August and September) where you can ride the lift after dark.

A herbal liquor product made by the legendary Zwack distillery, Unicum is the quintessential Hungarikum (product of Hungary) and this museum is worth a visit. While the Unicum recipe remains a well-guarded secret, visitors can learn about this esteemed company’s legacy spanning six generations, a World War, and communist rule, before touring the carefully restored distillery, with systems that are over 100 years old. The final stop on the tour is the Unicum cellar, where visitors are invited for a tasting of classic Unicum, the newer Unicum Plum, as well as other variations.

Filmmaker István Szabó’s 1999 movie Sunshine, starring Ralph Fiennes, presents the lives of a Jewish Hungarian family living in Budapest over four generations and incorporates the Zwack family story into the plot.

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.

Fittingly, this museum is lodged in a former barracks on the northwestern corner of Kapisztrán tér, cannonballs from the 1849 siege still lodged in the walls. The exhibits, which include collections of uniforms and military regalia, trace Hungary's military history from the original Magyar conquest in the 9th century through the period of Ottoman rule to the mid-20th century. You can arrange an English-language group tour (up to 20 people) in advance for 8,000 Ft; for larger groups the cost is 12,000 Ft.

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 gallery has an excellent collection of local contemporary art and changing exhibits of international art.

Heroes' Square is the gateway to a square kilometer (almost ½ square mile) of recreation, entertainment, beauty, and culture. A bridge behind the Millennial Monument leads across a boating basin that becomes an artificial ice-skating rink in winter; to the south of this lake stands a statue of George Washington, erected in 1906 with donations by Hungarian emigrants to the United States. You can soak or swim at the lovely, turn-of-the-20th-century Széchenyi Fürdő, jog along the park paths, or marvel at the art nouveau buildings and beasts of the Budapest Zoo.

In the eastern quarter of the park, former leisure-time youth center and major concert hall Petőfi Csarnok is slated for demolition but as of mid-2016 still hosts a weekend fleamarket in its back lot. The Gundel restaurant charms diners with its turn-of-the-20th-century ambience. Fair-weather weekends, when the children's attractions are teeming with youngsters and parents and the Széchenyi Fürdő is brimming with bathers, are the best times for people-watchers to visit the park; if you go on a weekday, the main sights are rarely crowded.

Beside the City Park's lake stands Vajdahunyad Vár (Vajdahunyad Castle), a fantastic medley of Hungary's historic and architectural past, starting with the Romanesque gateway of the cloister of Jak, in western Hungary. A Gothic castle whose Transylvanian turrets, Renaissance loggia, baroque portico, and Byzantine decorations are all guarded by a spooky modern (1903) bronze statue of the anonymous medieval "chronicler," who was the first recorder of Hungarian history. Designed for the millennial celebration in 1896, it was not completed until 1908. In 2003, a bust of legendary B-movie actor Béla Lugosi was placed in an alcove along the southeast corner, its origins a mystery even today.