Széchenyi Chain Bridge

The crossing is 376 metres and takes about seven minutes from one bridgehead square to the other. Both pavements are asphalt and step-free, they climb gently to the middle, and at each river pier they swing out round the outside of the stonework on iron brackets, so for a few paces you are walking over open water.

Start on the Pest side and head west. That way Buda Castle and the hill fill the view ahead of you the whole crossing, which is the version of this walk people remember. Going the other way, the view is upstream to the Parliament, with the dome of St Stephen’s Basilica inland behind it, and it works better looking back from the middle than it does head on.

Buses and taxis pass close on the roadway, so this is not a quiet walk in the daytime. Stairs at both ends drop you to the quays if you would rather carry on along the river.

Four lions guard the bridge, two at each end, on granite plinths three metres high. Marschalkó János carved them from Sóskút limestone, and they have sat at the bridgeheads since the bridge opened.

Every visitor gets told the same story: that the sculptor forgot the tongues, was jeered at the opening and threw himself into the Danube. Neither half of it is true. The lions have tongues, and Marschalkó went on to a long career of public commissions across the city, dying in 1877 a well-regarded man. The tale is an import, told about other sculptors and other monuments abroad long before it reached Budapest.

The reason nobody sees the tongues is anatomy. A big cat does not loll its tongue like a dog, so with the jaws held as these are, the tongue sits back in the mouth where the lower jaw hides it from anyone at pavement level. Stand below a plinth, look up into the open mouth, and there it is.

Each of the two river piers is built like a triumphal arch, with the roadway running through the gateway underneath. Look at the brackets over the opening for the carved lions’ heads, with reconstructions of the state arms of the building period above them, and at the cast-iron lamp hanging inside each gateway.

The chains are worth stopping for. They are double rows of flat steel links, each plate 360 to 375 millimetres tall with a 29 millimetre gap to the next, and they do not simply pass over the piers. They run through saddle chambers built into the stonework and end in anchor chambers 14 metres below ground on each bank.

The railings are the other thing people walk straight past. There are 704 running metres of them, braced with X-shaped infill and a decorative casting on every fourth post. Stop where a chain comes down to deck level beside a pier, which is the one spot where you can see how the whole thing holds together.

This is what people remember about the bridge, and it is a reason to come back rather than cross once in daylight and tick it off. The restoration replaced 1,180 fittings in the garland lighting with LEDs, and the strings of light running the length of the chains are the shape everybody photographs.

Do not expect a colour show. Out of respect for the monument the garland burns a single warm white for most of the year, and the plan the city adopted puts colour on the bridge only a handful of days a year, chiefly the national holidays, and then only for a few hours. Warm white is the better look anyway, with Buda Castle lit on the hill above the far bank.

There is no closing time and no last entry, so there is no rush. The bridge is also where people stand for the Parliament lit up downstream, which we cover in our guide to the Parliament at night.