Gellért Hill

This is the part that surprises people who last came here before 2020. The rebuild cut new entrances and passageways through the fortress walls, linking the two sides of the hill, and a striking staircase on the eastern side takes you up into the courtyard directly from the Liberty Statue. There is no gate and no ticket desk.

Inside is a new public park of more than 6,000 m², part of a green space that grew by half again to around 20,000 m². At the centre of it stands the country’s largest national flag, 72 m² of tricolour on a 36-metre mast.

Three things to find. The pomegranate tree kept from the old planting. The reflecting pool with an eternal flame at its centre, in the former round-bastion courtyard. And a bronze inlay set into a circular stone surface, marking the Geodetic Base Point where Hungary’s survey network began.

Give it half an hour on its own. There is a café, an ice cream parlour and a gift shop in the park, which is more than the hilltop has offered in years.

Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl’s monument went up in 1947 as the Liberation Monument. The whole thing stands 40 metres; the bronze figure holding the palm leaf, the Genius, is 14 metres of that, and the two smaller bronzes flank the steps below.

Anyone comparing an old photograph with what they see now will spot two changes. The group has been conserved after decades of neglect, and a cross has been placed on the pedestal of the principal figure, which the Citadella explains as a reference to 1100 years of Hungarian statehood and the country’s western Christian heritage.

The monument’s politics have been rewritten on the hill itself. During the 1956 revolution the statue of the Soviet soldier that stood here was toppled, and later political changes removed further Soviet references. That soldier survives, and it stands in Memento Park out in District XXII, its plaque still recording where it came from.

The terraces round the statue were redesigned with the new park, so this is also where most people stop first. Go early or late if you want a photograph without a queue of them.

The lookout terraces opening off the park, along the wall-walk and the bastions, are free. That is worth saying plainly, because two of the best ones are not and it is easy to assume the whole hilltop is behind a ticket.

Three to find by name. The North Bastion faces Elisabeth Bridge and Margaret Island. The East Bastion faces Liberty Bridge and the Pest waterfront, and that is the view people come up here for. The South Bastion looks the other way, over Kelenföld. There is also a north-facing lookout at the V-shaped gap above the former main gate, now called the Great Gate, where Budapest’s citizens began pulling the fortress apart in 1899 and ran out of money before they finished.

The two ticketed ones are the Roof Garden 360, on top of the Western Round Bastion, and the Round Bastion Terrace, which replaced the glass restaurant box the socialist-era hotel pushed into the breached cannon tower. Both are reached through the exhibition. Do the free ones first and decide afterwards whether you want more.

The exhibition fills the Western Round Bastion, more than 1,700 m² of casemates, and its argument is the hill itself. Whoever held Gellért Hill held symbolic authority over the nation, marked in turn by a cross, a mosque, a Habsburg fortress and a Soviet monument.

Emese, the mythical mother of Álmos, narrates thirteen centuries, and you move from one period to the next as if through a sequence of gateways: the Conquest and the founding of the state, the Ottoman occupation, Habsburg rule, the kuruc uprisings, 1848 to 1849, the world wars, the Holocaust, Trianon, Soviet occupation, 1956 and the reprisals, and the regime change. The Citadella says it gives particular weight to the historical role of women.

It is an immersive, self-guided audio experience rather than a display of objects. That is the thing to know before you buy, because nobody can take you round. Personal guides are not allowed, and a position-aware audio guide included in the ticket does the job instead.

It is the right choice if Hungarian history is what you came for, and skippable if you are here for an hour and a view. The ticket is sold on the Citadella’s own website, on a timed slot. Photography inside is allowed, strictly without flash.

Magyarok Nagyasszonya Sziklatemploma, the Cave Church of Our Lady of Hungary, is cut into the base of the hill at Szent Gellért rakpart 1, across the road from the Gellért Hotel and about ten minutes down from the Liberty Statue. It belongs to the Paulines, the only men’s religious order founded in Hungary. The church was closed in 1950 when the order was banned, walled up with two metres of concrete in the 1960s, and reopened in 1989.

You buy a ticket at the welcome centre in the outer cave, and an audio guide in eight languages takes you round. It is open from Monday to Saturday and shuts to visitors during the Mass that begins at 17:00 every day, so go before five.

What to find inside, the Mass times and the one tour that goes in are on our Cave Church page.

The hill is named after the man this monument commemorates. In 1046, during the pagan uprising associated with Vata, Bishop Gerard was hurled from the rock face above the Danube, and from the fifteenth century the hill increasingly carried his name.

The monument was unveiled on 16 June 1904, one of ten statues King Franz Joseph gave the city. Gyula Jankovits made the seven-metre bronze bishop raising his cross, Aladár Gárdos the kneeling pagan Magyar warrior beside him, and the architect Imre Francsek designed the semicircular arcaded colonnade behind.

The figure was drawn at three metres and enlarged so it would hold its own against the mass of the hill, which it does. It faces Elisabeth Bridge, and you can pick it out from the Pest bank.

Below the colonnade an artificial waterfall runs down the hillside, operated by the city. It is not on all year round, so treat it as a bonus rather than a reason to come. The monument stands on the Szent Gellért lépcső above Döbrentei tér, which makes it a natural halfway stop on the climb from the north foot of the hill.