Hungarian Parliament

The sixteen-sided central hall sits beneath the Parliament’s 96-metre dome, a height set deliberately to mark 896 AD, when the Magyar tribes settled the Carpathian Basin. It is the centre of the building in every sense: the two chambers sit either side of it, and the first session ever held here, in 1896, met in this room before the rest was finished.

Look up at the statues of sixteen Hungarian rulers round the walls, each with a coat of arms, and at Károly Lotz’s paintings overhead. This is the room most people come for, because the Holy Crown is here.

The crown has been displayed in the Dome Hall since 2000, with the sceptre, orb and sword, and soldiers of the Crown Guard stand over it. Tradition ties it to Saint Stephen, but its oldest part, the lower band, was a gift from Constantinople to King Géza I later in the 11th century, and the arches on top were added after that. Look for the crooked cross on top.

Photography is banned in this room to protect the crown, and you only get a few minutes before the group moves on, so move close as soon as you are in. What to look for on it, and how it spent 33 years at Fort Knox: the Holy Crown of Hungary.

The most ornate ceremonial space in the building: red carpet, gold leaf, ceiling paintings by Károly Lotz, and stained-glass windows either side from Miksa Róth’s workshop. It is the first big room on the route, and the one that sets the scale for the rest.

Photos are allowed here, unlike in the Dome Hall, so this is where to take your pictures. It is the room most worth slowing down for.

Hungary now has a single-chamber parliament, so the former upper house is preserved as a ceremonial room. It is one of two matching chambers either side of the Dome Hall, so it shows you what the working chamber on the other side looks like without interrupting it.

Look for the cigar holders built into the benches, a leftover from the days when members smoked in the building. It is the last big room on the route, and a good place to ask the guide or replay the audio guide about the building’s politics.

The members’ lounge outside the chamber is where the guide covers the building’s story, its architecture and the artworks on the route. Often hurried past; worth a minute if you want the practical side of how the House actually worked.

The square is free, open all day, and worth the half hour before your slot. The 2014 rebuild put it back much as it was before the war: the Kossuth, Andrássy and Tisza memorials are back as copies, the Rákóczi equestrian statue of 1937 never left, and the Attila József statue now sits on the steps down to the river.

The 1956 memorials are the part to find. Beside the Rákóczi statue are a symbolic grave and the Flame of the Revolution, and under the arcade of the Ministry of Agriculture, across the square, bronze balls set into the stone mark where the shots of 25 October 1956 hit the wall. Under the square, the Parliament’s museum runs free exhibitions, including a 1956 memorial and a Lapidarium of original facade stone, on shorter hours than the tours.

The flag in front of the building has had a military honour guard since 2014. Catch it changing if you can, but the times have changed over the years, so do not plan around it.