Budapest — Sights
Two cities, one river, and a Parliament lit up like a jewellery box.
- Hungarian Parliament Building — 45 minutes inside, ending at the Holy Crown; book on the one official site
- Fisherman's Bastion — Seven cone-topped turrets framing the Parliament across the river
- Buda Castle — A domed palace whose terrace looks down on the river and its bridges
- Matthias Church — A tiled rainbow roof outside, painted patterns on every wall inside
- Széchenyi Chain Bridge — An 1849 bridge guarded by four stone lions, best after dark
- Danube night cruise — An hour on the water, gliding past the floodlit Parliament
- Széchenyi Thermal Bath — Steaming outdoor pools in a yellow palace courtyard, open all winter
- Rudas Thermal Bath — A 16th-century Ottoman dome below, a rooftop pool over the river above
- St Stephen's Basilica — A 96-metre dome, the same height as the Parliament, with a lookout on top
- Heroes' Square — An archangel on a column, seven chieftains and the gateway to City Park
- Andrássy Avenue & Opera House tour — A gilded opera-house tour that ends with a short aria on the stairs
- Ruin bars (Szimpla Kert) — Crumbling courtyard houses turned into sprawling bars
- Great Market Hall — Strings of paprika downstairs, the smell of lángos upstairs
- Gellért Hill & Citadella — A hilltop fort reopened after 11 years, five bridges in one view
- Szentendre — 40 minutes by suburban train to a town of painted lanes and Serbian churches
- House of Terror Museum — Secret-police HQ, cells in the basement included
- Dohány Street Synagogue — Europe's largest synagogue and a Holocaust memorial garden
- Shoes on the Danube Bank — Sixty iron shoes at the water's edge
- Margaret Island — A car-free park island, about 5 km round by bike
- Vajdahunyad Castle — Romanesque to Baroque, one lakeside compound
- Memento Park — Giant communist statues, retired to an open field
- Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker Museum — A WWII hospital and Cold War bunker under the hill
- Museum of Fine Arts Budapest — Old Masters beside Heroes' Square
- Hungarian National Museum — Hungarian history in a neoclassical hall