Budapest

Budapest is technically two cities. Buda occupies the west bank of the Danube — hilly, ancient, anchored by the castle district on a limestone ridge and Fisherman’s Bastion on the edge of the hill. Pest occupies the flat east bank — a grid of 19th-century boulevards built during the Austro-Hungarian imperial expansion, radiating out from the river with the Hungarian Parliament building at the northern tip of the embankment. The two halves were separate municipalities until 1873, and they still feel different: Buda is residential and quiet, Pest is commercial and dense. The Chain Bridge, the first permanent crossing between them, opened in 1849 and remains the most photographed structure in the city.

The castle district on the Buda side holds the Royal Palace, the Matthias Church and Fisherman’s Bastion — the neo-Gothic terrace built between 1895 and 1902 with the best direct view across the Danube to the Parliament. On the Pest side, Heroes’ Square marks the end of Andrássy Avenue with the Millennium Monument, built in 1896 to commemorate a thousand years of Magyar presence in the Carpathian Basin. St Stephen’s Basilica, two blocks from the river, is the largest church in Budapest and reaches exactly 96 metres — the same height as the Parliament dome, fixed by legislation as a symbol of the equal standing of church and state. The Great Market Hall on the river end of Váci Street is the best covered market in the city.

The Danube River cruise in the evening is one of the best ways to see the city — the Parliament, the castle, the bridges and the embankment buildings are all illuminated after dark, and the scale of the layout is easier to read from the water than from the streets. Budapest has a halal restaurant scene that has grown significantly in recent years, concentrated in the inner city districts around the Liszt Ferenc tér area and the Erzsebetváros quarter. The city’s thermal bath culture — Szechényi, Gellért, Rudas — dates from the Ottoman period and is still functioning; the baths are single-sex or have designated hours where applicable.