Budapest

A travel guide to Budapest

Budapest is the Europe you’ve been looking for.

Budapest is laid along both banks of the Danube: the palatial fortress of Buda rising high above the river to one side, the commercial center of Pest splayed along the flat bank opposite.

It is a city of hearty food, forthright and genuine people, fine wines, and elegant thermal baths.

It’s a city steeped in a wonderfully convoluted past—Romans and Magyars, Mongols and Turks, Austrian emperors and Soviet puppets—yet one that looks to the future, with elegantly odd new buildings going up to replace some of the cement-block scars from the Soviet era.

But these avant-garde new structures and sad Soviet holdovers are outnumbered in the old city by a gorgeous mélange (yes, I said it: a gorgeous mélange) of decorous 19th century Empire structures and decorative Secessionist ones, all jostling for space on busy boulevards.

And, yes, you can do it all in a long weekend. 

• Budapest background
• Budapest costs
• How to get to Budapest
• Budapest baths