BUDAPEST · HUNGARY
Two banks, one river, lit gold at dusk.
Danube cruises and thermal bath palaces, ruin bars in the old Jewish Quarter, Castle Hill above the water and the grand boulevards of Pest. Reviews of the city’s best, district by district.
Only here
A few things this city does that no one else can copy.
Plenty of capitals have a river and a castle. Only Budapest is built over a hundred thermal springs, only Budapest turned its bombed-out courtyards into bars, and only here does the whole skyline burn gold off the water.
Built on hot springs
The Bath Palaces
Budapest sits over more than a hundred thermal springs, and first the Ottomans, then the Habsburgs built palaces around them. Soak in the lemon-yellow courtyard of the Széchenyi, play chess on a floating board, or take the waters under the Gellért’s art-nouveau glass. No other capital bathes like this.
- 1 Budapest: Széchenyi Spa Day Ticket with Optional Upgrades
- 2 Budapest: Full-Day Gellért Spa Ticket
- 3 Budapest: Mandala Day Spa & Luxury Pool Experience
Born in District VII
The Ruin Bars
In the old Jewish Quarter, derelict tenements were filled with flea-market furniture and turned into the strangest bars in Europe. Szimpla Kert started it and a whole circuit followed. Mismatched chairs, a Trabant in the courtyard and a different room behind every door.
- 1 Budapest: Bar Crawl with a Local Guide
- 2 Budapest: Ruin Bar Pub Crawl with Entry Tickets
- 3 Budapest: Guided Tour to Ruin Bars with Games and 6 Shots
After dark on the river
The Lit-Up Danube
Come nightfall the Parliament, the Castle and the Chain Bridge are floodlit gold and the whole UNESCO riverfront doubles in the black water. An hour on deck with a drink in hand is the best view in the city, and very nearly the cheapest.
- 1 Budapest: City Highlights Cruise with Welcome Drink
- 2 Budapest: Nighttime or Daytime Sightseeing Cruise
- 3 Budapest: 1-Hour Evening Sightseeing Cruise with Drink
Start on the water
Start where the whole city shows off.
If you’ve only got one evening in Budapest, spend it on the Danube. The cruise the entire skyline was built to be seen from.
The classics
Budapest’s Most Popular Tours
The Danube cruises, the thermal baths, the Buda Castle climb and the Parliament. The experiences most travellers come to Budapest for.
Where to begin
The experiences a Budapest trip is built around.
The Danube cruises, the bath palaces, the ruin-bar nights, the Hungarian table, Castle Hill and the day trips up the river. The handful of things most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big decision
Which cruise on the Danube?
It’s the thing everyone books and the thing everyone overthinks. Three ways onto the water, depending on whether you came for the view, the dinner, or the night out.
The City of Spas
Bathe in a palace.
Budapest is the only capital on earth where you plan a day around a bath. Eighty million litres of warm mineral water rise under the city every day, and the grand spa houses make a ritual of it: the Széchenyi’s steaming neo-baroque courtyard, the Gellért’s tiled art-nouveau halls, the Ottoman domes of the Rudas above the river.
Read the guide: the best thermal baths in Budapest →After dark in District VII
The bars in the ruins.
When the old Jewish Quarter stood half-derelict, someone strung lights through a crumbling tenement, dragged in junk-shop sofas and opened a bar. Szimpla Kert is still going, and a whole circuit grew up around it: courtyards, garden bars and crawls that find the rooms you’d never open a door to alone.
See the ruin-bar nights →The river
The Pearl of the Danube.
The Danube doesn’t run past Budapest so much as through it, splitting hilly Buda from flat Pest and tying them back together with a row of floodlit bridges. The whole riverfront, Parliament to Castle, is a UNESCO World Heritage stretch, and after dark it is the finest skyline in Central Europe.
Cruises & river trips →Paprika & Tokaji
The Hungarian table.
Hungarian food is its own world: paprika-deep goulash, chimney cake turning over coals, foie gras and sheep’s cheese under the wrought iron of the Great Market Hall, and Tokaji, the sweet gold wine kings drank. A market walk or a tasting crawl makes the introductions.
- 1 Countryside Half-day Gastro-Wine Tour from Budapest Meal & pickup
- 2 Budapest All in One Small Group Walking Tour with Strudel Stop
- 3 Budapest Centre Food Tour with 10+ Tastings, Wine & Street Food
By district
Pick a district, or a bank of the river.
Buda’s Castle Hill for the views. District V for the Parliament and the riverbank. District VII for the synagogue and the ruin bars. The bath palaces, the Basilica, and the day trips beyond the ring road.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
On the water if you want the skyline. In the baths if you want the warm. On foot for the boulevards, at a market for the food, in a ruin bar after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
Never been? Here’s a long weekend that takes in both banks without a wasted hour.
Just added