3 days in Budapest: the perfect itinerary for exploring

"Castle Hill" or "Castle Mountain" or "Buda Fortress" or simply "Castle" - these are the various translations of the Hungarian words for the hill on which the old royal palace and its surrounding buildings stand. This is where you usually start to get to know Budapest, as the castle, towering above the Danube on its right, Buda, bank, is visible from afar and immediately attracts attention.

The most important building on Castle Hill. The reign of King Matyas was a golden age for the palace. At that time it was said: "In all Europe there are three most beautiful cities: Venice on the sea, Buda on the hill and Florence on the plain". With the death of King Matyash, it was all over.

The Turkish threat was growing, and Matyasz's successors were no longer interested in architectural fun. The Battle of Mohács (1526) ended Hungary's independence. During the liberation of Buda from the Turks in the XVIII century, the palace was almost destroyed. In the XVIII century, under the Habsburgs, it was rebuilt again. But even these buildings burned down during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849.

The Royal Palace on Castle Hill was rebuilt at the end of the 19th century. In that version, the palace had a magnificent neo-Renaissance dome (you can get some idea of it by looking at the dome of the Basilica of St. István). In the late fall of 1944, during the Red Army's capture of Budapest, the palace was destroyed for the third time, and many other buildings on Castle Hill were also damaged.

By visiting the tour "Secrets of the Royal Palace" you will be able to learn the most interesting facts about this attraction.

The king is hunting, next to a deer he has shot, a little lower down is a retinue with dogs, and on the right is a girl with a fawn clinging to her. The sculptural group reproduces the plot of Mihai Vereshmarti's ballad "The Beautiful Ilonka" (1832), which tells how a village girl met a young hunter in the forest, fell in love with him, but when she learned that the hunter was King Matyash himself, she withered and died of grief. On the left, the king's chronicler, who first recorded the story, sits on a stone without taking part in the general scene.

Known to everyone as the Matthias Church (and by no means "St. Matyas"!), it is actually the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. King Matyas rebuilt and enlarged the old church: it was then, in the XV century, that the large southern bell tower of 80 meters high - the tallest structure of Buda Castle - appeared. It was already damaged during the first storming of Buda by the Turks, and in 1541 it was turned into a mosque. The paintings were hidden under a layer of whitewash, and the altar was destroyed. For almost a century and a half, until the end of the XVII century, the church building served as the main mosque of Buda.

And in 1686, when the troops of the Holy League stormed Buda, trying to dislodge the Turks from it, the following was discovered: the Hungarian defenders of the church had managed to hide the statue of the Virgin Mary, erecting a wall in front of it in the temple. A cannonball fired from a cannon on the Liga side hit the church building, the wall collapsed, and the Virgin Mary appeared again. The Turks were shocked, and the city fell the same day.

At the end of the 19th century, on the eve of the great Hungarian holiday, the Millennium of the Homeland, the church was rebuilt again in order to give it its true, original Gothic appearance. And the wonderful multi-colored roof, covered with tiles from the famous Zsolnay factory in Pest, of course, also acquired its present appearance only at the end of the 19th century.

The Fisherman's Bastion was built between 1899 and 1902 so that the church would have a dignified surroundings and the public would be able to walk here and admire the views of the Danube and Pest.

The seven Neo-Romanesque towers are meant to symbolize the seven Magyar tribes that came to these shores a thousand years before the bastion was built, and the name reminds us that in the Middle Ages it was the fishermen's guild that took responsibility for defending this section of the castle in case of enemy invasion.

In the small square between the southern facade of the church and the Fishermen's Bastion stands an equestrian monument to St. Istvan, the first king of the Hungarians. Istvan was the direct successor of Prince Árpád, who led the Magyars to the banks of the Danube. He emerged victorious in the struggle for supreme power in Hungary, and on Christmas Day 1000 (possibly 1001) he was crowned by the legate of Pope Sylvester II Astrik. St. István's Day, August 20, is Hungary's main national holiday at all times of its history.

The entrance to the Labyrinth (Labirintus), a system of underground passages and caves 1200 meters long, is located on Gospodská Street(Úri utca).

Whether or not one visits the Labyrinth, travelers usually manage to get hungry by this point. You should walk past the Plague Column to the west, in the opposite direction from the Fisherman's Bastion. There, on Szentháromság utca, the tiny Ruszwurm coffee house has been open since 1827. You should try a piece of Esterhazy cake or just have a cup of coffee here and the feeling of traveling to the XIX century will accompany you for a long time during your further walks around Budapest.

The Alabárdos restaurant is hidden in a medieval building opposite the Matyash Church. "Alabárdos" stands for halberdier. The interior features guns, shields, those very halberds and other romantic paraphernalia. The menu offers European and Hungarian dishes, including catfish from the Tisza River. The pan-fried fish fillet is served with Hungarian cottage cheese halushki and fish sauce. The restaurant is open only in the evenings. During the day it is worth a look in the "antiquities shops" at the entrance to the establishment.

To have a story to tell, it is good to visit establishments "with history" - the restaurant Gundel, once belonged to the reformer of national cuisine Karai Gundel, the oldest cafe in the capital Gerbeaud or the luxurious New York.

National cuisine in the "tourist" version is presented in restaurants like Mátyás pince or Paprika; the same, but without the starchy tablecloths and the need to book a table in advance - in small restaurants in the depths of Buda and Pest, under the signs Étterem or Vendéglő. For a quick and tasty lunch, there are two places to eat in Budapest:Liszt Ferenc tér orRadáy utca.

Much of what makes this city appealing concerns one not-so-long period of Budapest's life. This is the time from the unification of the city in 1873 to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918. All the best things, everything we admire, everything that Budapestians proudly show us is from that beautiful era.

Sometimes this time is called "Budapest noon".

You can start at Heroes' Square. The square and the adjacent Varoschliget Park is exactly where Hungarians celebrated the country's Millennium in 1896. The sculptures of the Millennium Monument depict the horsemen led by Prince Arpad who came to the banks of the Danube in 896, the Archangel Gabriel and all the main characters of Hungarian history: everyone has his own place in it, his own legend and his own story.

It is hard to imagine, but the magical structure of Vajdahunyad Castle in the park is none other than one of the pavilions of the exhibition that took place here in 1896. It also acts as a kind of "architectural-historical outline": its constituent buildings are copies of various buildings erected in Hungary at different times and in different places. Vajdahunyad at night is a fabulous sight; travelers who have heard that Hungary is associated with the legend of Count Dracula may find in the castle a silent reminder of him....

Not far away is a yellow domed building, which one would like to call a palace or a museum, thanks to the solemn porticoes and various sculptures on the roof. In fact, it is the famous Széchenyi Medicinal Bath. Entering through the entrance, which faces the park, the traveler will see the interior decorated with mosaics, more befitting a palace than a bathhouse. If you enter the building from the opposite side (the Zoo side), you can look inside through the windows of the glassed-in cafeteria and see for yourself: the baths! Beautiful, hot, functioning in the open air all year round.

You can spend a whole day in the vicinity of Heroes' Square. In addition to the park with Vajdahunyad Castle and the Szechenyi Baths, there is also the Budapest Zoo, the Circus, the Gundel Restaurant and the Contemporary Art Exhibition Hall. We should also mention the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Transportation and the Amusement Park, but they are all closed for renovation in the next year or two: stay tuned.

Andrássy Avenue (Andrássy út), the most beautiful avenue in the Danube capital, leads from Heroes' Square to the city center. To be precise, it is the other way around: the avenue was built to be a ceremonial road to the place of celebration. It is named in honor of Count Gyula Andrássy.

This character of Hungarian history reproduced in his own biography the most important turns in the fate of the country: an active participant in the revolution of 1848-1849, he was sentenced to death and even symbolically executed, but nine years later he swore an oath to Franz Joseph, and after another decade he became Minister-President of the Hungarian government of the dualistic monarchy, which he had a hand in creating.

Unlike the much busier other radial avenues - Rákóczi út, which is used by a dozen shuttle buses and a few tourist buses, or Váci út, which carries the main traffic to and from the city - Andrássy Avenue was and remains a "solemn prospect". It resembles Nevsky, but unlike St. Petersburg's main avenue, it is dominated by residential buildings rather than public buildings.

Among the tenement houses, on the right side of the avenue, if you go to the center, the House of Terror stands out. The letters of the word "terror" are carved into the canopy that crowns the façade at eaves level, so that its name can be read against the sky and the shadows falling on the wall. It was once home to the Hungarian State Security Office, and before that the headquarters of the Hungarian Nazis, the Crossed Arrows Party. It is now a museum dedicated to both terrorist regimes.

The museum is heavy, scary; perhaps not even a museum as a scientific institution, but a huge installation, not pretending to be objective, but telling about what was experienced. It is arranged in such a way that the visitor receives not so much new knowledge as immediate emotions, especially since part of the exposition is the prison premises themselves, used by one organization of state terror and another, and presented to the viewers without indulgence to their feelings.

Cardinal József Mindszenty, among other prisoners, was imprisoned here in 1948. Released during the 1956 revolution, after its suppression he took refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest, where he lived for fifteen years; his memoirs detail his stay in Andrassy Avenue Prison.

Behind Oktogon Square, i.e. "octagon" (and the square is indeed octagonal), the most parade-like part of the avenue begins. Here you can turn left or right into any street and be sure that you will come across something worth seeing: a restaurant square with a statue of Franz Liszt, the famous Budapest Opera House, a youth nightclub that turns into an antique market on Sundays, or - if you are lucky and manage to look inside one of the old Pest houses - one of the magnificent courtyards with galleries that can tell you more about local life than any guidebooks.

And if you don't turn around, there's the Hungarian State Opera, whose majestic building is impressive both inside and out - especially if you take one of the daily tours. You won't be able to sit in the Imperial Box, but it's worth a visit to the Adjutant's Box next door.

The first half of the day is well spent walking around the neighborhood called Belvaros. The word wants to be translated from French as "beautiful city", although in Hungarian it means "inner city", i.e. the city inside the old walls. Nevertheless, the first variant will also be quite fair - just look at the buildings of Váci Street.

Váci utca, the pedestrianized restaurant and souvenir street known to all tourists, runs along the Danube from Customs Square (Fővám tér) to Veresmarty Square. In the past, it did not stop there as it does now, but turned into Váci út (Váci Avenue) and led further into the town of Vác (hence the name).

There are plenty of restaurants and souvenir stores, English is spoken more often than Hungarian, and the whole street is a ribbon of entertainment, food and shopping. By the post office building on the left, you can't help but notice the red mailbox. These boxes of Budapest are as much a greeting from the Austro-Hungarian times as the subway line built back in the 19th century, or the lodging houses with lions and atlantes on their facades. They stand on the sidewalks, not pressed against the walls of the houses, separately; this is how benches or monuments are usually placed.

As hard as it is to tear your eyes away from the endless rows of shops selling paprika, scarves, hats, magnets, toys and other souvenirs, interspersed with equally endless rows of restaurant tables, it is worth looking up.

Váci Street has many very curious buildings and monuments. Most of them are residential houses built in the second half of the 19th century. The exception is the solid building of the New Town Hall. Its first floor is reminiscent of Florentine palazzos of the Renaissance, but the columns inside, despite the presence of Corinthian capitals, correct order bases and even cannelures, are already cast-iron; this gives an indication of the "Iron Age", the age of industry. It is worth considering the details of the facade design: openwork door lattices, stone carvings and paintings.

At the crossroads of Pala Nyari Street, a row of residential houses interrupts the Church of St. Michael. Its gray building with white baroque details stands in line with the neighboring houses, and high above their roofs bell tower with a clock under the eaves. Classical music concerts are always going on here. Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi.

You can look at every house here. For example, the house belonging to the heirs of Michael Thonet, the inventor of the famous "Viennese chairs", does not remain unnoticed by tourists for a minute: Gothic and Renaissance motifs and fantastic, unparalleled ornaments are used in the decoration of the facade. Recognizable details are triangular balconies, statues in niches on the upper floor and a gallery with openwork fencing stretching across the entire facade.

In the neighboring house, as a hundred years ago, there is a Philanthia store selling flowers and all kinds of interior decorations. Flowers are the main motif of the facade (the word Philanthia itself means "love of flowers"). With Mihai Vörösmarty Square (Vörösmarty tér) ahead, the journey along Váci Street is almost complete. Walking it from start to finish is a great idea. The only trouble is that all the tourists who come to Budapest think the same. That's why it is always full of people and restaurants are open until midnight. Meanwhile, if you turn off to the side...

To visit Budapest and ignore the baths is like going to Athens but not climbing the Acropolis. The second half of the day should definitely be given to one of the baths. There are plenty to choose from:

1. Széchenyi - fun, crowded, a total delight; but for very strict tastes - not always perfectly clean (in summer on Saturdays - night youth discos);
2. Gellert - Art Nouveau luxury, mosaics and stained glass; in summer, in addition, the outdoor pool has an artificial wave;
3. Rudas Baths - "men's club", women and men are allowed together on weekends, on Tuesdays only women are allowed, but the other four days only men are allowed in the swimming pool;
4. Király - everything here is preserved as the Turks did in the 16th century, without any changes;
5. Lukács Baths- cozy, though a bit far away;
6. Irgalmasok Veli Bej Bath - boring, but as hygienic as possible.

There are indoor and outdoor swimming pools everywhere.