Budapest City Guide

Budapest Sights

Cruise the Danube and explore Buda's colourful Castle District.

Budapest's highlights include a cruise along the Danube, strolling along the riverfront or across romantic bridges, browsing through antique bookshops and jewellery stores, or 'taking the waters' at one of the city's many Turkish-style baths. The city is well laid-out, rarely confusing, and ideal for walking.

Budapest Nightlife

No end of choices in a city that knows how to enjoy itself.

For a city of its size, Budapest has a huge choice of things to do and places to go after dark - from opera and folk dancing to jazz and meat-market clubs. It's almost never difficult getting tickets or getting in; the hard part is deciding what to do.

Shopping Budapest

Traditional markets and hyperkinetic malls.

New and old exist side by side in Budapest. Open-air markets selling farm produce stand side by side with mammoth shopping malls that set new standards in variety. There's a plethora of traditional products on offer, from folk embroidery to porcelain, goose feather duvets to Pick-brand salami.

Hercules Villa

Archaeological site, Ruin

Hercules Villa, in the middle of a vast housing estate northwest of Fő tér, is the name given to some reconstructed Roman ruins. The name is derived from the astonishing 3rd-century floor mosaics of Hercules' exploits found in what was a Roman villa.

Electrotechnology Museum

Museum

This museum has a collection of 19th-century generators, condensers and motors, and the world's largest supply of electricity-consumption meters. The enthusiastic staff will show you how the alarm system of the barbed-wire fence between Hungary and Austria once worked. There's also a display on the nesting platforms that the electric company kindly builds for storks, so they won't try to nest on the wires and electrocute themselves.

Independence Bridge

Bridge

Opened for the millenary exhibition in 1896, Independence Bridge has a fin-de-siècle cantilevered span. Each post of the bridge, which was originally named after Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph, is topped by a mythical turul bird ready to take flight. It was rebuilt in the same style in 1946.