Budapest Scavenger Hunt and Self-Guided Tour

The route: from Parliament over the Chain Bridge up to Castle Hill

11 stops · about 64 min walking · start: Hungarian Parliament Building · finish: Matthias Church

The hunt starts at the Hungarian Parliament in Pest and leads through Liberty Square to St Stephen's Basilica and Elizabeth Square. You then cross the Danube on the Széchenyi Chain Bridge to the Zero Kilometre Stone in Buda, pass the Castle Garden Bazaar and climb to Buda Castle and the Fountain of King Matthias, then walk along Castle Hill to Fisherman's Bastion and finish at Matthias Church. Where you begin and the order of the eleven stops are both set in the app, and as every riddle is solved from the pavement outside, nobody has to pay an entrance fee to finish the hunt.

Open the route map ↗

1. 

   1Hungarian Parliament BuildingStart

   Imre Steindl's neo-Gothic Parliament on the Danube was begun in 1885, inaugurated in 1896, the year Hungary celebrated its millennium, and completed in 1904. It is the largest building in Hungary, 268 metres long and 96 metres high, and the Holy Crown of Hungary has been displayed inside since 2000.

2. 

   2Liberty Square

   Szabadság tér was laid out around 1900 on the site of a former Austrian barracks. Around it stand the Hungarian National Bank and the former Stock Exchange Palace, both by Ignác Alpár and completed in 1905, a Soviet memorial to Red Army soldiers who died in 1944–1945 and a statue of Ronald Reagan, unveiled in 2011.

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3. 

   3St Stephen's Basilica

   Budapest's great basilica was built from 1851 to 1905 by three architects in turn, József Hild, Miklós Ybl and József Kauser, after the first dome collapsed in 1868. Its dome is 96 metres high, the same as the Parliament, and a chapel holds the Holy Right, the mummified right hand of St Stephen, Hungary's first king.

4. 

   4Elizabeth Square

   Erzsébet tér, named after Queen Elisabeth, known as Sisi, is one of the largest green spaces in central Pest. Its Danubius Fountain, designed by Miklós Ybl, shows the Danube as a river god above three women who stand for its tributaries, the Tisza, Drava and Sava. A functionalist former bus station from 1949 also stands on the square.

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5. 

   5Széchenyi Chain Bridge

   Opened in 1849, the Chain Bridge was the first permanent bridge across the Danube between Buda and Pest. It was initiated by Count István Széchenyi, designed by the English engineer William Tierney Clark and built under the Scot Adam Clark. Legend says its stone lions have no tongues, but the tongues are simply not visible from below.

6. 

   6Zero Kilometre Stone

   This 3-metre limestone zero, a sculpture by Miklós Borsos unveiled in 1975, stands in Clark Ádám Square at the Buda end of the Chain Bridge. It marks Hungary's Kilometre Zero, the point from which road distances from the capital are measured.

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7. 7Castle Garden Bazaar

   Miklós Ybl, architect of the Hungarian State Opera, designed this neo-Renaissance complex of arcades, staircases and pavilions at the foot of Buda Castle, built between 1875 and 1883. After decades of decay it was restored and reopened in 2014, with terraced gardens and a covered escalator up towards the castle.

8. 

   8Buda Castle

   The royal palace on Castle Hill has been destroyed and rebuilt several times since the Middle Ages, most recently after heavy damage in the Second World War. Its long wings now house the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the National Széchényi Library, and a bronze Turul, the mythical bird of the Hungarians, watches over the gate.

9. 

   9Fountain of King Matthias

   In a courtyard of Buda Castle, Alajos Stróbl's bronze fountain of 1904 shows King Matthias as a hunter with his hunting party and dogs. It illustrates the tale of Beautiful Ilonka, a girl who fell in love with the king without knowing who he was, and tossing a coin into it is said to bring you back to Budapest.

10. 

    10Fisherman's Bastion

    Frigyes Schulek built this neo-Romanesque terrace between 1895 and 1902, with seven towers for the seven Magyar tribes. According to tradition it is named after the fishermen's guild that defended this stretch of the walls in the Middle Ages. In front of it stands an equestrian statue of St Stephen, and its arcades look out over the Danube and Pest.

11. 

    11Matthias ChurchFinish

    The Gothic Church of Our Lady of Buda is popularly named after King Matthias, who married here. After the Ottomans took Buda in 1541 it became a mosque, and in 1867 Franz Joseph and Elisabeth were crowned King and Queen of Hungary here. Frigyes Schulek restored it in the late 19th century, with a colourful roof of Zsolnay tiles.

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