Buda Castle

The terrace in front of the palace’s river facade is the view everyone comes for: the Chain Bridge straight below, the Parliament upstream, St Stephen’s Basilica’s dome across the water. It is free, it is open all night, and it is where the funicular and the steep road up from Clark Ádám tér both deliver you.

The horseman in the middle is Prince Eugene of Savoy, who fought in the recapture of Buda in 1686 and crushed the Ottoman army at Zenta in 1697. József Róna’s bronze was ordered by the town of Zenta, which then could not pay for it, so it has stood here since 1900 instead.

Look at the two Turkish prisoners on the plinth and the battle reliefs round it. Above the terrace, on the corner of the Habsburg Gate’s railing, is the Turul, Gyula Donáth’s bronze bird of Magyar legend with a sword in its claws, 5 metres high and 7 metres across, put up in 1905 and craned back after restoration in 2021.

Come before 10:00 or after dark. Through the day every guided walk on the hill gathers here, and the palace walk meets right under the statue.

Walk through the Habsburg Gate or round from the terrace and you are in the Hunyadi Court, the outer courtyard, with Alajos Stróbl’s Matthias Fountain of 1904 on the far wall. King Matthias stands at the top in hunting dress, arriving at a spring with a stag at his feet.

Below him, on her own plinth to the right, sits Fair Ilonka, the peasant girl of the legend, with a fawn. On the left is Galeotto Marzio, the court chronicler, with a falcon. One of the hounds is a post-war copy, because the original was destroyed in 1945.

Across the courtyard is the Csikós, György Vastagh’s beaten-copper horse-herd taming a stallion, made after the sculptor had studied the herdsmen on the Hortobágy. Beside it stand the rebuilt Guardhouse, now a café-restaurant with a terrace over the court, and the Riding Hall, rebuilt from nothing between 2016 and 2019.

The Riding Hall is an events venue, so you cannot wander in, but you can look into the riding arena from its lobby every day between 13:00 and 16:00 unless an event is on. The visitor centre in this courtyard, open 9:00 to 17:00, tells the story of the rebuilding.

Everything inside the palace was looted or burnt in 1945 and rebuilt plain, except this room. St Stephen’s Hall, the reception room that won a grand prize at the 1900 Paris exhibition, was reconstructed piece by piece from the original designs and reopened on 20 August 2021. Look for the white Zsolnay ceramic fireplace, the carved wood panelling and the painted kings round the walls.

It is in the wing between the Castle Museum and the library, entered from the Lion Court, and it is visited in timed slots because the room is small. You go round with a multilingual tablet guide, or with a guide on the walk we feature, and the hall’s own ticket also admits you to the Castle Museum’s medieval palace rooms next door. Allow 30 to 45 minutes.

Slots fill, so book online before you come up the hill. The walk-up desk sells only the next slot with space.

The Hungarian National Gallery fills the wings under the dome, entered from the Lion Court side, and holds Hungarian art from medieval stone carving to today. Three things justify the ticket: the Gothic winged altarpieces from the country’s medieval churches, Mihály Munkácsy’s dark realist canvases, and Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka’s dreamlike landscapes, which you will not see anywhere else.

The dome terrace is included in the exhibition ticket. It is 54 steps up from the top floor, open until 17:00 and only in fair weather, with no more than 15 people allowed out at a time. On a clear day it is the highest point of the palace and worth the climb.

The Gallery is open every day except the last Monday of the month, and it stops letting people in at 17:00, so it is a morning or early-afternoon visit. The Budapest Card gets you in.

The plain classical building at the top of the funicular, on Szent György tér, is Sándor Palace, the office of the President of Hungary. Built in 1806 for Count Vince Sándor, it was the Prime Minister’s seat from 1867 to 1945 and was rebuilt after the war.

You cannot go in, but the Honvéd Palace Guard outside it changes on the hour through the day, and at noon the whole unit turns out for an armed ceremonial drill.

The noon drill is the one to plan around. It lasts a few minutes, you watch from the square, and it costs nothing. In the summer months the guard also stages a musical guard change about once a month.

If you have ridden the funicular up, you arrive right beside it.

The palace you see today is two buildings in one. Alajos Hauszmann finished a Neo-Baroque royal palace in the years before the First World War. The siege of 1945 gutted it, and the rebuild of the 1950s and 1960s gave it a plainer facade, offices and galleries inside, and a taller, barer dome.

The National Hauszmann Programme, launched in 2019, has been putting the old palace quarter back: St Stephen’s Hall, the Riding Hall and the Guardhouse are finished, the palace’s northern wing and Archduke Joseph’s palace on Szent György tér were still under construction when we checked, and the palace’s own reconstruction was paused by the government in September 2026 pending a review.

What that means on the ground is hoardings round parts of the courtyards, lorries on the access roads and paths that move. The Castle Headquarters publishes a live closure map, and the tour operators tell you to allow 15 minutes to find a meeting point.

None of it stops a visit. The terraces, the fountains and the museums are open, and the rebuilt buildings are the best reason to come now rather than in ten years.