Best Things to See And Do in Budapest: Local Insider Tips Updated 2025

Outdoor festivals, concerts and lectures enrich the cultural offer of summer, which are often held in historical buildings. In Budapest there are forty theatres, seven concert halls and an opera house. The Metropolitan Szabó Ervin Library plays an important role in the general education of the capital's population.
Tourists visiting Budapest can receive free maps and information from the nonprofit Budapest rolletto casino registration Festival and Tourism Center at its info-points. The Dohány Street Synagogue is the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest active synagogue in the world. To the sides are the Museum of Fine Arts and the Kunsthalle Budapest, and behind City Park opens out, with Vajdahunyad Castle. As far as Kodály körönd and Oktogon both sides are lined with large shops and flats built close together.
The synagogue is located in the Jewish district taking up several blocks in central Budapest bordered by Király utca, Wesselényi utca, Grand Boulevard and Bajcsy Zsilinszky road. In Budapest, the central government is responsible for the urban planning, statutory planning, public transport, housing, waste management, municipal taxes, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, among others. Budapest has been a metropolitan municipality with a mayor-council form of government since its consolidation in 1873, but Budapest also holds a special status as a county-level government, and also special within that, as holds a capital-city territory status.
The mayor and members of General Assembly are elected to five-year terms.The Budapest General Assembly is a unicameral body consisting of 33 members, which consist of the 23 mayors of the districts, 9 from the electoral lists of political parties, plus Mayor of Budapest (the Mayor is elected directly). Besides, each of Budapest' twenty-three districts has its own town hall and a directly elected council and the directly elected mayor of district. The Mayor is responsible for all city services, police and fire protection, enforcement of all city and state laws within the city, and administration of public property and most public agencies. Riding on bike paths is one of the best ways to see Budapest – there are about 180 kilometres (110 miles) of bicycle paths in the city, fitting into the EuroVelo system.

• The Gellért Baths and Hotel were built in 1918, although there had once been Turkish baths on the site, and in the Middle Ages a hospital.
• The most characteristic Gothic-style buildings are actually Neo-Gothic, like the most well-known Budapest landmarks, the Hungarian Parliament Building and the Matthias Church, where much of the original material was used (originally built in Romanesque style in 1015).
• There is a base for major international companies including, but not limited to, Nissan CEE, Volvo, Saab and Ford.
• The airport is accessible via public transportation from the city centre by the Metro line 3 and then the airport bus 200E and 100E.
• Budapest’s districts are numbered according to three concentric semicircles.
• Located at Corvin Palace on Blaha Lujza Square, Time Out Market Budapest features 11 kitchens, three bars, five event spaces, and around 540 seats.
• Budapest is an important center for music, film, theatre, dance and visual art.

This reorganized the city into 22 districts, a number that grew to 23 after Soroksár seceded from Pesterzsébet in 1994. Each district has a municipally recognized name, some of which correspond to how locals call that area or neighborhood (e.g., Belváros, V. district; Terézváros, VI. district), others which (e.g., Újbuda, XI. district) are neologisms. One of his most beautiful buildings in Budapest is the Museum of Applied Arts. Another noteworthy structure is the Budapest Western Railway Station, which was designed by August de Serres and built by the Eiffel Company of Paris in 1877. Budapest's two most beautiful Romantic architecture buildings are the Great Synagogue in Dohány Street and the Vigadó Concert Hall on the Danube Promenade, both designed by architect Frigyes Feszl (1821–1884).

• Another, newer pedestrian-friendly street, the New Main Street, also stretches through the city centre.
• Most of these entities are headquartered in Budapest’s Central Business District, in District V and District XIII.
• Numerous landmarks have been created in the last decade in Budapest, like the National Theatre, Palace of Arts, Rákóczi Bridge, Megyeri Bridge, Budapest Airport Sky Court among others, and millions of square meters of new office buildings and apartments.
• A precedent to show the city’s self-conscious is the top section of the city’s main square, named as Szechenyi.
• Budapest sustained major damage caused by the attacking Soviet and Romanian troops and the defending German and Hungarian troops.
• The latter are often the names of villages that were gradually annexed to the city (e.g., Sashalom, Budafok) or of superseded administrative units of former boroughs.

Budapest

If you've never visited the city, the Szimpla will blow your mind – just be prepared to pay a little more for your drinks. Why we love it It’s still an essential Budapest experience (but perhaps not for Hungarians trying to avoid tourists). This is Budapest’s original ruin bar, the one that set the tone for so many others to follow, adorning a vast, dilapidated building, its open courtyard and labyrinth of rooms, with eclectic furniture, edgy artwork and fairy lights. Budapest History Museum Ft 3,800 (€9.50).
There are three main railway station in Budapest, Keleti (Eastern), Nyugati (Western) and Déli (Southern), operating both domestic and international rail services. The city is a vital traffic hub because all major European roads and European railway lines lead to Budapest. Budapest is the most important Hungarian road terminus, all of the major highways and railways end within the city limits.

City site

One states that the name derives from Roman times, since there was a local fortress (Contra-Aquincum) called by Ptolemy "Pession" ("Πέσσιον", iii.7.§ 2). The Scythians are certainly an ancient people and the strength of Scythia lies in the east, as we said above. Attila went in the city of Sicambria in Pannonia, where he killed Buda, his brother, and he threw his corpse into the Danube.

Opera and theatres

Float up to the highest spot in Budapest on the Zugliget Libegő Choose from the highlights below, explore the beauties and enjoy what the capital has to offer! 📍 How to do a weekend in Budapest🍲 The best restaurants in Budapest🏘️ The best Airbnbs in Budapest🏨 The best hotels in Budapest🍽️ Our all-new Time Out Market Budapest🇭🇺 Ultimate guide to what to do in Budapest Why we love it Passengers sit in two-person gondolas as the Hungarian capital spreads out before them, romantic on summer evenings, off the scale on snowy winter mornings. Effortlessly gliding up to Budapest’s highest point atop János Hill at 527 metres in 12 panoramic minutes, the Zugliget Chairlift is an accessible, affordable and thrilling attraction in operation all year round.

Architecture

Budapest has many municipal parks and most have playgrounds for children and seasonal activities like skating in the winter and boating in the summer. Here is the oldest and best known Evangelical Church of Budapest, the Deák Ferenc Square Lutheran Church. In the St. Stephen's Square is the St. Stephen's Basilica, the square is connected by a walking street, the Zrínyi Street, to the Széchenyi István Square at the foot of The Chain Bridge. There are buildings such as the Hungarian National Bank, the embassy of the United States, the Stock Exchange Palace, as well as numerous statues and monuments such as the Soviet War Memorial, the Statue of Ronald Reagan or the controversial Monument to the victims of the German occupation.

Appreciate the distinctive architecture of the Great Synagogue

The ornate Basilica of St Stephen is the city’s biggest church and is mere blocks from Deák Square. Alternatively, hop on bus 16, which has many stops throughout the city, or hike up (it’s not as far as it seems, we promise). It begins behind the basilica and stretches to Heroes’ Square, one of the city’s most famous monuments. Gerbeaud, Hadik and Centrál are equally great choices for a trip back in time.
Many international banks and financial service providers also support the financial industry of Budapest, firms such as Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, GE Capital, Deutsche Bank, Sberbank, ING Group, Allianz, KBC Group, UniCredit and MSCI among others. Large Hungarian multinational corporations headquartered in Budapest are listed on the BSE, for instance the Fortune Global 500 firms MOL Group, the OTP Bank, FHB Bank, Gedeon Richter, Magyar Telekom, CIG Pannonia, Zwack Unicum and more. The Budapest Stock Exchange, a key institution of publicly offered securities in Hungary and Central and Eastern Europe, is situated in Budapest's CBD at Liberty Square. A good indicator of the city's potential for innovation and research, is that the European Institute of Innovation and Technology chose Budapest for its headquarters, along with the UN, whose Regional Representation for Central Europe office is in the city, responsible for UN operations in seven countries.
Other buildings with Gothic features are the Inner City Parish Church, built in the 12th century, and the Mary Magdalene Church, completed in the 15th century. In the chronological order of architectural styles Budapest is represented on the entire timeline, starting with the Roman City of Aquincum representing ancient architecture. Strong rules apply to the planning, authorisation and construction of high-rise buildings and consequently much of the inner city does not have any. The number of high-rise buildings is kept low by building legislation, which is aimed at preserving the historic cityscape and to meet the requirements of the World Heritage Site. Of the 525 square kilometres (203 square miles) occupied by the city, 83 square kilometres (32 square miles) is green area, park and forest.

Our top tips for visiting Budapest

To their surprise, the central committee of the "Hungarian Working People's Party" did so that same evening. The demonstrators went to the Budapest radio station and demanded to publish their demands. On 23 October 1956 citizens held a large peaceful demonstration in Budapest demanding democratic reform. The new Communist government considered the buildings like the Buda Castle symbols of the former regime, and during the 1950s the palace was gutted and all the interiors were destroyed (also see Stalin era). In 1949, Hungary was declared a communist People's Republic (People's Republic of Hungary).
The monuments of the dictatorship were removed from public places, into Memento Park. In the last decades of the 20th century the political changes of 1989–90 (Fall of the Iron Curtain) concealed changes in civil society and along the streets of Budapest. In recent times a significant decrease in population occurred mainly due to a massive movement to the neighbouring agglomeration in Pest county, i.e., suburbanisation. In the early 1970s, Budapest Metro's east–west M2 line was first opened, followed by the M3 line in 1976.