The hours themselves are about as simple as a Budapest museum gets. The Castle Museum opens at 10:00 and closes at 18:00, every day of the week, all year, with no summer and winter timetable to check. There is no timed entry either, so no slot to book and nothing to miss.
Three things complicate that: the last hour, which is shorter than it looks; the handful of festive days the museum closes or shortens; and the days when everybody, or almost everybody, gets in free.
Opening hours
Castle Museum
| Monday | 10:00-18:00 |
| Tuesday | 10:00-18:00 |
| Wednesday | 10:00-18:00 |
| Thursday | 10:00-18:00 |
| Friday | 10:00-18:00 |
| Saturday | 10:00-18:00 |
| Sunday | 10:00-18:00 |
Last entry and the ticket offices close at 17:30, and the exhibitions start closing from the top floor down. Open every day of the week, all year, apart from a handful of festive closures.
The exhibitions can start closing as early as 17:45, beginning on the second floor and working down towards the entrance, and you need to have collected your things from the cloakroom and left the building by 18:00. So be in by 17:30, go straight to the top and work down, and treat the second floor as the part that goes first.
Free entry days at the Budapest History Museum
Everyone gets in for nothing on Hungary’s three national holidays, 15 March, 20 August and 23 October. The museum keeps its usual hours on all three and no online ticket is needed, so you walk up to the desk and in.
The last Saturday of the month is free for anyone under 26, and for up to two close relatives bringing someone under 18, for EEA nationals. The museum has moved that free Saturday to the following week before now, so check the date before you go.
Free all year, with the right document: children under 6, visitors over 70 from EEA countries, disabled visitors and one companion each, teachers in public education, and holders of an ICOM card, a press card or a tourist-guide card arriving with a group. Anyone else can get in free with a Budapest Card, shown at the ticket desk.
Free entry of every kind covers the exhibitions only. The museum’s own programmes are charged at the event price whoever you are.
The museum’s own event days
Alongside the exhibitions the museum runs its own evenings and family days through the year: museum theatre evenings, talks with a historian, and Medieval Castle Day. They are sold as separate event tickets, they are not covered by an ordinary ticket or by the Budapest Card, and unlike entry they do sell out.
They are also the one time the building is genuinely busy, so if you want the museum quiet, an event day is the day not to come.
Best times to visit
Time of day
A morning start, soon after 10:00, gives the four levels the room they need and leaves the basement for the quiet part of the afternoon.
The last hour is the one to avoid. Arrive between 17:00 and the 17:30 last entry and you will get in, but the clearing begins at the top while you are still working your way up, and the medieval palace at the bottom is the part you will end up rushing.
Day of the week
Monday, unusually for a Budapest museum. Aquincum, the Kiscelli Museum and the Budapest Gallery, the other Budapest History Museum sites, all close on Mondays, and the Castle Museum keeps its usual hours.
Otherwise the differences are small. The four floors are rarely crowded even when the Lion Courtyard outside is, and that is part of why the museum is worth the few minutes off the main Castle Hill route.
Season
The hours never change and everything is indoors, so there is no season to plan around.
In high summer the basement is the coolest place on Castle Hill, for the simple reason that it is a stone cellar. In winter it is the indoor afternoon that saves a wet day, and a ticket bought in advance keeps for thirty days, so you can hold one in reserve and use it when the weather decides.
How long to spend
The medieval palace alone, about an hour
The chapel crypt, the Gothic Hall, the Albrecht Cellar and the Renaissance Room, which is what most people come up the hill for.
All four levels, 2 to 3 hours
Prehistory at the top, a thousand years of the city on the first floor, the Gothic sculptures on the ground floor and the palace below.
With St Stephen's Hall, half a day
The hall is a separate timed ticket from the same desk, and combined tickets cover both in one visit.
Medieval Jewish House of Prayer opening hours
The museum runs a second site in the Castle District, and its week is almost the opposite of the Castle Museum’s.
The Medieval Jewish House of Prayer is at Táncsics Mihály utca 26, about 15 minutes north on foot. It is closed on Mondays and on Saturdays, opens 10:00 to 18:00 from Tuesday to Thursday and on Sundays, and closes at 17:00 on Fridays. It has its own ticket, and the Budapest Card covers it free as well.
The room is still in use as the Synagogue of Budavár by the United Hungarian Israelite Congregation, so it closes on Saturdays. The museum posts any religious days it shuts for.
Insider tips
The free days are the crowded days
Entry has no queue worth the name on an ordinary morning, because there is no timed entry and there are three ticket offices. The exception is 15 March, 20 August and 23 October, when everyone is getting a free ticket issued at the desk. Come at opening time on those days, or come on a different one.
A date on a ticket is not a thing here
Nothing about entry is booked ahead, so if a plan collapses you have lost nothing. The only part of the building with a slot to miss is St Stephen’s Hall, which is a separate ticket from the same counter.