Travel guide
Featured on September 16, 2026
Budapest’s M1 is continental Europe’s oldest underground railway.
Places
Ride the low yellow carriages of the M1 beneath Andrássy Avenue, then surface for Heroes' Square, City Park and a bath. Later, take tram 2 along the Danube, cross to Castle Hill for late light, and end in the old Jewish Quarter, where ruin bars sit behind nineteenth-century facades.
Tip: Give it at least two full days; book Parliament ahead, and do Széchenyi at opening time or Rudas in the evening.
Base on the north shore for more than beaches: swim in Balatonfüred, walk the Tagore Promenade, take the ferry between Szántód and Tihany, then climb to Tihany Abbey for the view over the water. Farther west, Badacsony gives basalt hills, cellar doors and the local Kéknyelű grape.
Tip: Late June is good for warm water without the thickest crowds; September works for harvest, swimming if the weather holds, and quieter trains.
In Széchenyi Square, the former Mosque of Pasha Qasim lets you read the Ottoman layer at a glance; below ground, the Early Christian Necropolis opens painted tomb chambers from Roman Sopianae. Leave time for the Zsolnay Cultural Quarter and an evening walk up toward Tettye for rooflines and the Mecsek hills.
Tip: Go on a Saturday morning if you want the Pécs Market Hall first, and keep the necropolis for the hot middle hours.
This is the puszta at full scale: racka sheep, Hungarian grey cattle, horsemen and a horizon that barely breaks. In autumn, common cranes come in to roost over the fishponds at dusk; at other times, the draw is the old herdsmen's world around the Nine-arched Bridge and the Mátai stud.
Tip: Autumn is the season for crane migration; book a guide if you want the fishponds at dusk.
The abbey hill makes the founding kingdom feel solid: Benedictine cloisters, a basilica, and a library whose dark wood seems to run forever. The monastery still grows herbs and lavender, so the place smells lived-in rather than preserved.
Tip: Allow half a day, and check in advance whether the library is open on your date.
Eat
Beef is simmered with onions, sweet paprika, potatoes and often csipetke dumplings until it lands closer to a soup than a stew.
Where: At a weekday-menu kifőzde or a roadside csárda on a cross-country drive.
A round of yeasted dough is deep-fried, then rubbed with garlic and topped with sour cream and grated cheese.
Where: At market hall counters in Budapest and beach stands around Lake Balaton.
River fish, often carp, is cooked with paprika until the broth turns deep red and hot.
Where: At a halászcsárda by the Danube or Tisza, especially around Baja or Szeged.
Thin sponge layers are stacked with chocolate buttercream and finished with a hard caramel top.
Where: In an old cukrászda in mid-afternoon, with coffee and a glass case full of other temptations.
Story
At Széchenyi Bath the air smells of minerals and wet stone, and old men slap chess pieces down in the steam. In Budapest, people hop off tram 2 for coffee and cake, then drift back to the Danube as if the evening light were an appointment. A couple of hours out, the frame changes completely: abbey hills, reed-fringed Balaton, and the flat push of the puszta.
Around 895, Magyar groups led by Árpád entered the Carpathian Basin. By 1000, Stephen I was being crowned and turning a riding confederation into counties, bishoprics and monasteries. His court faced west to Rome, not back to the steppe. That choice fixed the country's place in Europe for the next thousand years.
In 1526, the young King Louis II lost at Mohács and died while fleeing the field. Within years, Buda was Ottoman, the west was Habsburg, and Transylvania stood between worlds. Baths, minarets and fortress lines followed. So did the habit of measuring local life against larger empires.
On 16 June 1989, hundreds of thousands gathered in Heroes' Square for the reburial of Imre Nagy, executed after the 1956 uprising. A young Viktor Orbán used the ceremony to demand that Soviet troops leave. Months later the border with Austria opened. Since then, politics has often turned on who gets to define the nation after communism.
Say hello
Jó napot!
Good day
Say: yoh NAH-pot
Köszönöm.
Thank you
Say: KUH-suh-nuhm
Elnézést.
Excuse me / Sorry
Say: EL-nay-zaysht
Beszél angolul?
Do you speak English?
Say: beh-SAYL AN-go-lool
Egészségedre!
Cheers / Bless you
Say: eh-GAY-shay-ged-reh
Surprises
A mummified royal right hand still goes out in procession. The Holy Right Hand of Stephen I is carried through Budapest each year on 20 August.
Tokaj was legally delimited as a wine region in 1737. It is one of the earliest state-defined wine appellations in the world.
A Hungarian spritzer comes with grammar. Order a kisfröccs, nagyfröccs or hosszúlépés and you are naming a specific wine-to-soda ratio, not just asking for white wine with bubbles.
Quiz
Which English word comes from a Hungarian village famous for its wagons?
Coach traces back to kocsi, meaning "from Kocs," the village whose horse-drawn wagons became known across Europe. The word travelled with the vehicle.
3 days
Day 1
Morning on the M1 to Heroes' Square and City Park, afternoon by Parliament and tram 2 along the Danube, evening on Castle Hill and in the Jewish Quarter after a bath.
Day 2
Pick up a car, drive to Pannonhalma Archabbey for the morning, lunch in Balatonfüred, then walk the Tagore Promenade and finish with late light at Tihany Abbey.
Day 3
Start in Tihany, take the ferry to Szántód, then drive south to Pécs for the Early Christian Necropolis, Széchenyi Square and an evening in the Zsolnay Cultural Quarter.
At a glance
At a glance
Member of
Listen
The song of the day
Gyöngyhajú lány
Omega
It is the Hungarian rock standard: a song almost everyone knows, and one whose opening still lands instantly.
Play a 30-second preview30-second clip via Apple Music
Before you go, watch or read
Az ajtó
Book
Magda Szabó turns a Budapest apartment building and a fierce friendship into a lesson in pride, class and the private life behind tidy facades.
Entry requirements
Hungary entry requirements by passport: of 197 passports, 92 can enter without a visa, 0 get a visa on arrival, 0 apply online before they travel and 105 need a visa from an embassy or consulate.
Find your passport for the documents, the cost and how long you can stay.
Safety
Due to terrorism
US State Dept, updated August 25, 2025. Advisories change: check your own government's travel advice before you go.
From the community
🇭🇺 Today's country is Hungary. Europe’s oldest mainland underground railway still runs beneath Andrássy Avenue. At dawn in Budapest, steam rises off Széchenyi while men in rubber caps move chess pieces between swims. On the Great Plain the air smells of reeds and paprika, and lunch still begins with soup. Then you step into a Tokaj cellar cut into volcanic rock, taste apricot-scented wine in the dark, and the country clicks into place. 📍 Places to visit • Budapest — Go for the Danube city…
Questions
Travel guide
9 travelers10 trips1 wishlisted
4.8(4 ratings)
See who has been there and what you need to travel.
Slovakia
Ukraine
Romania
Serbia
Croatia
Slovenia
Austria