Buda Castle and the Hungarian National Gallery

Buda Castle is the great Baroque palace that sprawls along the southern end of Castle Hill, and the view from its terraces, across the Danube to the Parliament and the whole of Pest, is one of the finest in Europe. There has been a royal seat here since the thirteenth century, and the hill has been besieged, burned and rebuilt many times, most recently after the devastating siege of 1944 and 1945, when the palace was reduced to a shell. What you see today is a postwar reconstruction of the palace as it was enlarged around 1900, and since the 2010s, a long-running national programme has been restoring lost elements of the district, from the Royal Riding Hall to the restored ceremonial St. Stephen's Hall inside the palace. The palace wings now house major institutions, above all the Hungarian National Gallery, which occupies buildings A to D. Its collection is Hungarian art only, and it tells the nation's story in pictures: medieval stone carvings and late-Gothic winged altarpieces, Baroque sculpture, the grand nineteenth-century history paintings of Mihály Munkácsy and his contemporaries, the bright open-air canvases of Pál Szinyei Merse, and turn-of-the-century and modern Hungarian painting. The main entrance is through building B. In 2026, the permanent exhibition costs around 3,200 HUF for adults, with a reduced rate for students and seniors, and for around 1,000 HUF extra you can climb to the dome terrace, an open gallery with a 360-degree view over the river, the Chain Bridge and Pest, open in fair weather during the day. The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays. A long-discussed plan to move it to a new building in City Park has not gone ahead, so the collection remains in the palace. The Tiqets page linked here gathers guided castle walks and city passes; gallery tickets themselves are sold at the gallery.

Getting up the hill is part of the experience. From Clark Ádám tér, at the Buda end of the Chain Bridge, the historic Castle Hill Funicular climbs to the palace in about a minute and a half; it is charming but queues build at peak times, and buses (including the 16 from Deák Ferenc tér in Pest) are faster and covered by ordinary transit passes. You can also walk up the stairs and paths from the river or through the Castle Garden Bazaar, a restored nineteenth-century garden complex below the palace, with escalators and lifts that bring you up to the palace terraces. Once on top, everything is walkable: the palace courtyards, the Lions' Courtyard, the terrace with the equestrian statue of Prince Eugene of Savoy, and a fifteen-minute stroll north along the cobbled lanes of the Castle District to Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion.

Working the gallery: start on the ground floor with the medieval and Renaissance collection, where the winged altarpieces are the treasure, then work up through the nineteenth-century rooms, where the vast history paintings tell the stories of Hungary's heroes and defeats in heroic style, and the twentieth-century collection above. Allow two hours for highlights, longer for temporary exhibitions, which cost extra. The Palatine Crypt, the burial chamber of the Habsburg palatines of Hungary, is included with the standard ticket. Finish with the dome terrace if the weather is clear; the view down the river to the Parliament is worth the climb. Next to the palace, the presidential office in the Sándor Palace has a guard ceremony at regular intervals, and the Castle District's lanes are lined with cafés and pastry shops for a break.

Know the trade-offs. The castle grounds are free and open at all hours, so you can enjoy the views without a ticket; the gallery is a serious national museum rather than a palace interior, and visitors expecting royal apartments may be surprised. Many state rooms were lost in the war, though restoration is gradually bringing some back. In summer, the terraces are hot and busy at midday, so come early or late, and remember that the gallery is closed on Mondays. For the best photos, come at sunset, when the palace and the Chain Bridge glow, or after dark, when the whole riverfront is lit.