Budapest, Hungary
Budavári Palota · BOO-daw-vaa-ree PAW-law-taw
The palace of the kings of Hungary on the hill above the Danube, destroyed and rebuilt so many times that almost nothing you see is older than 1950. Under it lies the court of King Matthias, where Renaissance Italy first came north of the Alps.
Photo: Paul Colin Hennig firstdorsal.eu, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Budapest was three towns until 1873: Buda and Óbuda on the hilly west bank, Pest on the flat east bank. The kings lived up here, on a limestone ridge a kilometre and a half long. After the Mongols burned the country in 1241–42, King Béla IV walled the hill, and a palace grew at its southern tip.
Since then the hill has been besieged more than thirty times. Turks held it for 145 years. The palace burned in 1686, 1849 and 1945. The long domed building you see was finished in 1912, burned out in the last siege of the Second World War, and rebuilt in a plainer form in the 1950s to 1980s.
The hill, the terraces and the courtyards are free. Each museum in the palace has its own ticket: the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum (Castle Museum) and the National Széchényi Library. St Stephen's Hall and other restored rooms are seen with their own tickets. The funicular is paid; the Fisherman's Bastion and Matthias Church have their own pages.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The terraces, the turul gate and Prince Eugene | Free |
| The Matthias Fountain and the Lion Court | Free |
| St Stephen's Hall | Own ticket |
| Budapest History Museum and the medieval palace | Own ticket |
| Hungarian National Gallery | Own ticket |
| The funicular (Sikló) | Own ticket |
In front of you the Danube turns south. Across it is Pest. To the left the Chain Bridge, the first permanent bridge between the two towns, opened in 1849. Further left, on the far bank, the Parliament.
Behind you a great bronze bird spreads its wings over the gate. It is the turul, the falcon of Hungarian legend that led the Magyars to their new home. It was set up in 1905.
The building behind it is not the palace of the kings. It is a museum building in a palace's clothes. Inside are the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the national library.
Walk round to the courtyard on the west side for the Matthias Fountain: the king in hunting dress over a stag he has killed, and a girl watching him. Her story is in the legends.
"The castle is a single building." Buda Castle means the whole hill: the palace, the old town of streets and churches to its north, the Fisherman's Bastion and Matthias Church. They have separate pages here.
"You need a ticket for the castle." The hill, the terraces and the courtyards are free, day and night. Only the museums inside charge.
"It is a medieval castle." The walls you see are mostly of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The medieval palace lies underneath, and parts of it can be seen in the History Museum.
"The funicular is the only way up." It is the easiest and the dearest. You can walk up from the river by the free stairs and lifts of the Várkert Bazár, or take bus 16.
We searched Hungarian and English sources for this list.
Walk the hill from south to north. The museums need half a day each; the outside needs two hours.
Count István Széchenyi paid for the Chain Bridge and brought a Scottish engineer, Adam Clark, to build it. Clark stayed, married in Budapest, and also dug the tunnel under the hill. The square at the bridge end is named after him.
The funicular opened in 1870, one of the first in Europe. It was wrecked in 1944 and reopened only in 1986. Its two cars pass each other halfway.
The bird holds a sword in its claws. In legend a turul came in a dream to Emese, mother of Álmos, foretelling that her son would found a line of kings. The kings who lived here counted themselves his descendants.
On the terrace in front of the dome stands Prince Eugene, facing the river. From here the view of Pest is the best in the city at dusk, when the Parliament lights up.
Maria Theresa built a baroque palace here in the 1750s and 60s. Between 1875 and 1912 the architects Miklós Ybl and Alajos Hauszmann doubled it to over three hundred metres and gave it a dome. Franz Joseph hardly used it.
In the winter of 1944–45 German and Hungarian troops made their last stand on the hill for fifty days. When it ended, the dome was a skeleton and the halls were open to the sky.
The communist government rebuilt the shell and stripped the inside. The dome was given a new shape. The rich rooms of 1912 were gone.
Since 2021 one of those rooms is back. St Stephen's Hall was rebuilt from old photographs and surviving pieces, with carved wood, Zsolnay ceramic stove and painted saints. It is part of a government programme to restore the palace of 1912.
Many Hungarians are glad to see it. Others think rebuilding vanished rooms is costly make-believe. Either way, it is the closest you can come to the palace the last kings knew.
Alajos Stróbl made the fountain in 1904. The king stands at the top in hunting clothes, with his hunters and dogs below. The girl on the right is Ilonka, from a ballad by Mihály Vörösmarty.
Through the gate guarded by lions is the inner courtyard and the entrance to the History Museum.
After the war, archaeologists digging in the rubble found the medieval palace under the baroque one: vaulted halls, a chapel, carvings from Matthias' Renaissance court. The History Museum shows them in its lower floors. The coat of arms of Matthias and his queen, Beatrice of Naples, is carved on a fountain basin from his court.
Matthias married Beatrice in 1476, and through her Italian craftsmen, books and ideas came to Buda. For a few years before his death in 1490 this was one of the most brilliant courts in Europe.
Cross back over the Chain Bridge after dark and turn round. The palace is lit gold above the river. It looks older and grander from below than it is up close, which is what its builders meant.
Béla IV walled this hill after the Mongol invasion of 1241, the same Mongols who were then conquering northern China. Matthias ruled in the years of the Ming (1368–1644) emperor Chenghua (1464–1487). When Suleiman took Buda in 1541, the Jiajing emperor (1521–1567) was on the Ming throne.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 1247 | Béla IV walls the hill after the Mongol invasion | Louis IX prepares his crusade |
| 1476 | Matthias marries Beatrice of Naples | Caxton prints the first book in England |
| 1541 | The Ottomans take Buda | Calvin settles in Geneva |
| 1686 | The siege that retakes Buda; the palace burns | Newton finishes his Principia |
| 1849 | Hungarian rebels storm the hill; the Chain Bridge opens | The California gold rush |
| 1912 | The palace is finished | The Titanic sinks |
| 1945 | The siege ends; the palace is a ruin | The Second World War ends |
| 2021 | St Stephen's Hall reopens | The world reopens after the pandemic |
One line to remember: besieged thirty times, burned three times, and still the crown of the city's skyline.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
A girl named Ilonka met a handsome hunter in the forest and fell in love. When she came to Buda to find him, she saw him ride in at the head of the court: he was King Matthias. Knowing she could never have him, she died of grief.
Source: Mihály Vörösmarty's ballad Szép Ilonka (1833), from older folk tales
Hungarians tell hundreds of stories of King Matthias walking among his people in disguise, testing his officials and punishing the greedy. "Matthias is dead, justice is gone," the saying goes.
Source: Hungarian folk tales and proverb
Hungarians do not clink beer glasses. The story is that Austrian officers clinked beer to celebrate when thirteen Hungarian generals were executed at Arad in 1849, and Hungary swore not to do it for 150 years. Many still do not.
Source: Widely told in Hungary; historians have found no record of the toast
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Checked 2026-11-12 The palace has no single ticket office. The first button is the Budapest History Museum (Castle Museum), the second the Hungarian National Gallery; each sells its own tickets.
Last checked 2026-11-12. Budapest guides of 2026 and the sites of the museums in the palace.
Checked 2026-11-12
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