The capital of Hungary is Budapest, the country's largest city by far, which straddles the River Danube in the north-centre of the country, at the heart of the Pannonian Basin. The 2016 microcensus counted 1,764,263 residents, and the wider metropolitan area has about 3.3 million, roughly a third of all Hungarians. The city is newer than it looks: it was created in 1873, when three separate towns were merged into one, hilly Buda and Óbuda on the west bank and flat Pest on the east. The easiest way to understand how those towns became one capital is to walk across it, from the castle on the Buda hills to the Roman ruins in Óbuda.
Castle Hill: Where Béla IV Moved the Kingdom Uphill
Start on Castle Hill, the long limestone ridge above the west bank. The site explains itself. In 1241 the Mongol invasion showed how hard it was to defend the open plain, so King Béla IV had stone walls built around the towns and put a royal palace on top of the Buda hills. He also invited German settlers to rebuild Buda and Pest. In 1361 Buda became the capital of Hungary.
The town on the hill reached its high point under King Matthias Corvinus in the late 15th century. After he married Beatrice of Naples in 1476, Italian artists and masons came to Buda, and his library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was second in size in Europe only to the Vatican's. The first book printed in Hungary came off a press in Buda in 1473. Around 1500 the town still had only about 5,000 inhabitants.
Then the Ottomans came. They took Buda in 1526 and 1529 and held it from 1541 until 1686, when a Holy League army of more than 74,000 men retook it after a siege. The palace you see on the hill today is largely a later rebuilding, and it was damaged again in the Second World War. Fire burned out its central and southern wings in the 1945 siege, and the post-war communist government, which saw the palace as a symbol of the former regime, demolished details such as the dome and the Habsburg Steps and rebuilt it in a simplified Baroque style.
Walk north along the ridge to the Matthias Church and the Fisherman's Bastion. The bastion looks medieval but is a Neo-Romanesque lookout built between 1895 and 1902 by the architect Frigyes Schulek, on a stretch of the old castle walls. Its seven towers stand for the seven Magyar chieftains who, by tradition, led their tribes into the Carpathian Basin in 895. Its main façade runs for about 140 metres along the ridge, and from its terraces you can see the whole of the next stretch of the walk: the river, the bridges and the Parliament on the far bank.
Down the Sikló to the Chain Bridge
From the palace gardens, ride the Castle Hill Funicular, the Budavári Sikló, down to river level. It opened on 2 March 1870 and was only the second funicular in Europe, after Lyon's. Bombs destroyed its cars and stations in the Second World War, and it did not run again until 4 June 1986.
At the bottom is Adam Clark Square and the Zero Kilometre Stone, the sculpted zero that marks Kilometre Zero for Hungary's roads. In front of you is the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, and it is the single structure that made one city out of two. Count István Széchenyi pushed for a permanent crossing, the English engineer William Tierney Clark designed it in 1839, and a Scottish engineer with the same surname but no relation, Adam Clark, supervised the building. It opened in 1849 as the first permanent bridge across the Danube in Hungary. Its 202-metre central span was one of the longest in the world, and the stone lions at each end were added in 1852.
Crossing the bridge shows you why the city was divided for so long. The Danube is about 230 metres wide at its narrowest point in Budapest. On the far side the land changes. Buda sits on hills and river terraces; Pest spreads across a flat sandy plain that is part of the Great Hungarian Plain. The highest point in the city, János Hill at 527 metres, is back on the Buda side, while the river itself runs at about 96 metres above sea level. On 18 January 1945, during the siege of Budapest, retreating German troops blew up the Chain Bridge, leaving only its towers; every other Danube bridge in the city was destroyed too. It reopened in 1949, a century after it was first finished, and its stone lions had survived.
Kossuth Square and the Parliament on the Pest Bank
Turn left along the Pest embankment and walk north to Kossuth Square. Here stands the building most people picture when they think of Budapest: the Hungarian Parliament. It was a direct result of the 1873 merger. Seven years after the three towns were joined, the Diet decided the new capital needed a parliament building that faced the Danube and expressed the nation's sovereignty. Imre Steindl won the design competition with a Neo-Gothic plan that drew on the Palace of Westminster in London.
Building began in 1885. The Parliament was inaugurated in 1896 for the millennium of the Magyar arrival, the keys were handed over in 1902, and the work was finished only in 1904, by which time Steindl had died. About 40 million bricks, half a million precious stones and 40 kilograms of gold went into it, and it has been the largest building in Hungary ever since. Under communist rule a red star stood on top of the dome; it was taken down in 1990.
Kossuth Square also carries the memory of 1956. On 23 October that year a peaceful demonstration in Budapest turned into an uprising against Soviet control when State Protection Authority (ÁVH) police shot students outside the radio building. Soviet forces crushed it by 10 November; about 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet soldiers were killed. On the embankment south of the Parliament, the Shoes on the Danube Bank, unveiled in 2005, mark another loss: people shot at the water's edge by Arrow Cross militiamen during the war, when between a fifth and two-fifths of Greater Budapest's 250,000 Jewish residents were killed.
Along Andrássy Avenue to Heroes' Square
Walk south-east through Lipótváros past St Stephen's Basilica, the city's largest church, and you reach the start of Andrássy Avenue. This boulevard is the clearest sign of the building boom that followed the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, when Budapest became one of the two capitals of the Dual Monarchy. The avenue was decreed in 1870, built from 1872 and opened on 20 August 1876. Its mansions, mostly finished by 1884, were designed by the leading architects of the day, led by Miklós Ybl, and the State Opera House stands on the avenue.
Under your feet runs the M1, the Millennium Underground. Built between 1894 and 1896 and opened by Emperor Franz Joseph in May 1896, it was the first electrified underground railway on the European mainland, and it still carries about 80,000 passengers a day. Its purpose was to take crowds to the millennium celebrations in the City Park at the far end of the avenue.
That is where the walk arrives. Heroes' Square, named officially in 1932, is dominated by the Millennium Monument, a 36-metre column topped by the Archangel Gabriel, with Grand Prince Árpád and the other chieftains at its base and two curved colonnades of Hungarian rulers behind. Andrássy Avenue, the M1 line, Heroes' Square and the City Park were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2002, joining the Danube banks and Buda Castle, listed in 1987.
The City Park and Budapest's Hot Springs
Just behind the square, in the City Park, is the Széchenyi Bath, the largest medicinal bath in Europe. Its water comes from two thermal springs at 74 and 77 °C, reached by a well that Vilmos Zsigmondi drilled to about 975 metres between 1865 and 1875. The bath building opened on 16 June 1913.
Hot water is one of the oldest reasons anyone lived here. Around 125 springs in Budapest produce about 70 million litres of thermal water a day, at temperatures of up to 58 °C, and Budapest is one of only three capitals in the world with thermal springs, with Reykjavík and Sofia. Back on the Buda bank, beside Erzsébet Bridge, the Rudas Baths were founded in 1571 or 1572 under Ottoman rule and keep their original dome and octagonal pool; the Király Baths, further north, are also Ottoman.
Óbuda and Aquincum: Where the City Began
To finish, head north along the Buda bank to Óbuda, in District III. This is where the story of the place starts. Celts settled here before 1 AD, and the Romans followed. Their town, Aquincum, became the capital of the Roman province of Pannonia Inferior early in the 2nd century AD. The Romans built roads, amphitheatres, baths and houses with heated floors, and the excavated town is now a museum with indoor and open-air sections. The land east of the river, where Pest now stands, was outside the empire.
Óbuda, meaning Old Buda, was the third partner in the 1873 union, though its name disappeared into the new one. In everyday Hungarian, Pest often stands for the whole capital, while Buda means everything west of the river, Óbuda included. The modern city covers 525 square kilometres in 23 districts, and it is dense. District VII, Erzsébetváros, home of the Dohány Street Synagogue, had about 30,989 people per square kilometre in 2014, one of the highest densities in the world. Budapest owes almost everything to its river, which our guide to the Danube, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea follows in full. For the bridge where Buda and Pest first met, see our closer look at the Chain Bridge in Budapest, and to see how the Parliament on Kossuth Square works day to day, read about the government of Hungary.
Quick Facts About Budapest
- Country: Hungary
- Continent: Europe (Eastern Europe)
- Country population: approximately 9.6 million
- Capital city status: Budapest is the capital of Hungary, the seat of national government, and the location of foreign embassies, parliament, and the head of state's official residence.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the capital of Hungary?
The capital of Hungary is Budapest. Budapest is the seat of national government, hosts most foreign embassies and consulates, and is typically where the head of state and parliament are located.
What continent is Budapest in?
Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is located in Europe, in the Eastern Europe region. As Hungary's capital, Budapest serves as the country's primary connection to the broader Europen political, economic, and cultural sphere.
Why is Budapest the capital of Hungary?
Budapest was chosen as the capital of Hungary for reasons that typically combine geography, history, and politics. Capital city selections often reflect a desire for centrality (being accessible from across the country), historical importance (being a longstanding seat of government or culture), or neutrality (being acceptable to multiple regions or ethnic groups within the country). The specific reasons for Budapest's designation are detailed in the city's history above.
What is Budapest known for?
As the capital of Hungary, Budapest is best known for housing the country's central government institutions — parliament, presidential or royal residences, supreme court, and key ministries. It is also typically a major cultural and economic center within Hungary, hosting national museums, embassies, and signature monuments. The introduction and history sections above provide detailed coverage of the city's specific notable institutions and landmarks.
Related Pages
- Hungary Country Guide — full geography, climate, economy, and culture overview
- Flag of Hungary — meaning, history, and design of Hungary's national flag