The Capital’s largest park

Budapest’s City Park is reputed to have been the world’s first public park open to all. In 1808 the Emperor ordered a Hungarian “National Garden” to be laid out, including the planting of seven thousand trees.
Today’s City Park contains amusement areas, sports grounds, foot and cycle paths, as well as the hundred-year old Széchenyi Thermal Baths (Pest’s first), popular for swimming, relaxation and treatments. There is also the Transport Museum, containing rare model locomotives, the Petofi Hall, home to rock concerts, and at weekends one of the city’s most interesting flea markets, where goods on sale range from interesting old books and antique painted plates to valuable old toys.
In summer there is boating on City Park Lake. In winter, it is transformed into Central Europe’s largest artificial skating rink.

Vajdahunyad Castle

On the shore of City Park Lake stands Vajdahunyad Castle. The first version of this was a wooden edifice constructed for the 1896 Millennium celebrations to a mix of designs in order to show characteristic elements of architectural styles from different parts of Hungary. This giant “model” was so successful that after it was taken down it was rebuilt out of stone. It later became home to the Agricultural Museum, which also contains one of the world’s largest trophy collections.

One of Europe’s oldest zoos

Budapest Zoo is a pleasant day out for all the family. It first opened in 1866 and has in the last decade undergone significant modernisation. Some of its buildings are particularly fine examples of Hungarian art nouveau. Five hundred types of animal and 4,000 different plants live within its 250 acres. The animal petting area is especially popular with children – they can come into close contact with and feed the goats, small cows and sheep.

Prize-winning Merry-go-Round

Spectacles and curios were already being paraded in the City Park in the middle of the nineteenth century, and travelling circuses regularly set up their big top here. Budapest’s own permanent circus settled here in 1891.
The adjacent Fun Fair is a real meeting of antique and state of the art technology. There are gentle rides on the Ferris wheels and, for the brave, there are fast, spinning, hair-raising rides on the roller-coasters. The hundred year-old merry-go-round, recently awarded the European Nostra Prize, and the two-thirds of a mile-long wooden framed switchback with nine peaks (now a listed monument) have a charming old-world atmosphere to them. There is an exhibition about the history of the Fun Fair in the departure building.

Formula One

There has been motor sport in Hungary since the early 1900s, when the first automobile club was set up. In 1912 the first international car race took place. Today, at Mogyoród (C5) just to the east of Budapest, the Hungaroring circuit is the only Formula One racetrack in Central Europe, and each year in August it is tested to the limits by the world’s best racing drivers, attracting crowds in their hundreds of thousands. On the other hand, the Hungarokart go-carting centre is open all year to followers of that sport.

The biggest church and the heaviest bell

It’s only a short walk from the Western Station to Budapest’s largest church, the 8,500 capacity Saint Stephen’s Basilica. With its principal façade facing towards the Danube, the proximity of the river necessitated digging extremely deep foundations; indeed the three levels of cellars go almost as deep as the height of the imposing church. The ground plan is in the form of a Greek cross, and the Basilica was consecrated in 1905. The right-hand tower houses Hungary’s heaviest bell, weighing in at nine tons, while Hungarian Christianity’s most important relic – the mummified right hand of the founder of the Hungarian State and Church, King Saint Stephen – can be seen in the chapel behind the sanctum.

Europe’s largest Synagogue

A short walk along the Inner Ring Road brings you to Dohány utca and Europe’s largest working synagogue. The first Jewish merchants settled in Buda in the middle of the thirteenth century. In the eighteenth century a Jewish community, along with craftshops and workshops, was established in Óbuda. A gradual migration into Pest started a few years later and in the mid-nineteenth century the period’s largest synagogue was built to a Romantic-Moorish design on the edge of the new Jewish quarter. It can seat three thousand people, and features cast iron columns and arches which at the time of its construction were very much a new innovation.
Concerts are regularly held in the Synagogue, and the adjacent building houses the world renowned National Jewish Museum. This covers the history of Hungarian Jewry, has displays of ritual artefacts and everyday objects, and commemorates the Holocaust. There are kosher shops and restaurants in the neighbourhood.

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