Location: Budapest
Top Things to do in Budapest
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What to do and see in Budapest, Central Hungary: The Best Museums
Over 15 million gallons of water bubble daily into Budapest's 118 springs and boreholes. The city of spas offers an astounding array of baths, from the sparkling Gellert Baths to the vast 1913 neo-baroque Szechenyi Spa to Rudas Spa, a dramatic 16th-century Turkish pool with original Ottoman architecture. The "Queen of the Danube" is also steeped in history, culture and natural beauty. Get your camera ready for the Roman ruins of the Aquincum Museum, Heroes' Square and Statue Park, and the 300-foot dome of St. Stephen's Basilica.
Restaurants in Budapest
1. Koller Gallery
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 263 reviews
Located in the historic Castle District of Budapest, we are working since 1953 as the oldest private fine art gallery in Hungary. Our three storey atelier-house & beautiful sculpture garden welcomes our visitors and customers with a homely and warm atmosphere. We show works of the best modern and contemporary Hungarian painters, sculptors and etchers. We advise our guests in fluent English, German, French and Italian.
Reviewed By yaacovc2016
A very good place to see contemporary art.the gallery is very friendly and prices are very good. The garden is lovely.
2. Budapest Pinball Museum
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 1,342 reviews
Hungary's first and Europe's largest continuously operating interactive pinball exhibition with unlimited trial of more than 130 pinball machines.
Reviewed By BigOxRy - Cumbria, United Kingdom
I went for my 30th to Budapest. My mate wanted to visit here. I was dubious and I was so wrong. Absolutely fantastic, wide range of games, great fun! Couldn’t recommend it enough!
3. Amazing Metal Art Gallery
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 118 reviews
Welcome in the Steel Figure Gallery, the only tourist attraction in the world, where you can find sculptures inspired by characters from cartoons, science fiction movies, animals and sculptures inspired by the most expensive hits of the automotive world. Autorobots, Steel Man or the Hunter were made of elements derived from recycling of steel scrap.
Reviewed By Trek17763437730
Really amazing gallery, masterpieces about our favorite movie characters and few fun art sculpture . Visitors can touch them and sit on few of those. After the gallery you can throw axes at next door or you can grab a beer upstairs good idea and good location. Also the staff friendly so highly recommended place.
4. Victor Vasarely Museum
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 149 reviews
Reviewed By clayrich - Burnley, United Kingdom
Fascinating museum showing the op art of Vasarely. I'll be honest and admit I had not heard of him but saw this in a Lonely Planet guide book on Budapest. It was terrific value and a bargain, really. There are some other works in addition to Vasarely but the main attraction are the mind bending op art works he produced. It's a lovely little museum and an insight into something I knew nothing of but will definately find out more. You will find yourself staring at some of these images, your mind not quite beleiving what you are seeing.
5. Imre Varga Collection (Gyujtemeny)
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 71 reviews
Reviewed By ThoughtfulTraveler18
Imre Varga created the moving sculptures in the Doheny Synagogue commemorating the Jewish lives lost during WWII in Hungary. He is not Jewish, and yet was commissioned to do these pieces, no doubt, because of his evocative works about humanity and the sacredness of life. His many sculptures of his father feature his loss of limbs after serving in the war, with his medals of honor affixed to his chest with nails, reminiscent of Jesus on the cross, conveying the hypocrisy and the sacrifices of war. We found this museum moving and beautiful, as each piece is deeply thoughtful and moving. Because we began our trip with the Doheny synagogue and ended it with the Imre Varga Museum, we felt it to be an extra magical, bookended trip. Don't hesitate to ask the museum director to explain some of the pieces, especially the sculpture of the woman on horseback in the inner courtyard.... a very special story awaits you. We also visited the Vasarely Museum nearby (wonderful).
6. Holocaust Memorial Center
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 1,580 reviews
The Holocaust Memorial Center is a national institution established by the Government in 1999. In 2002, it decided to construct the building of the Center in Pava Street, outside of the traditional Jewish quarter, further emphasizing its national character.The Holocaust Memorial Center is one of the few institutions in the world, established by the state, that focuses entirely on Holocaust research and education.The visitors are welcomed into a unique space that was named as the most impressive in Budapest, beside the city's panorama itself by Frank Owen Gehry, one of the leading architects in our time. The modern building is organically linked to the Pava Street Synagogue, an authentic venue that once used to be the second largest site for Jewish worship in Budapest.The Institution is a center for scientific research education and culture. It welcomes visitors with interactive permanent and special periodic exhibitions, experience-based museum pedagogical programs and cultural performances. Guided tours are available in five languages and special, thematically focused tours are offered regularly. A bookshop and a cozy coffee shop contribute to a memorable visit.
Reviewed By johnsX6820FE - Canada, null
The danger we face today, and perhaps always, when learning about terrible events in the past, is that we can be tempted to distance ourselves from the actions of people of that time by imagining that these were 'bad people doing bad things on a bad day'. Some historical wrongs perhaps fit this category. The Holocaust Memorial Center does not allow us the luxury of that distance and comfort. The evil, which seems yet to be fully acknowledged in our experience of Hungary, is that is was normal people, bureaucrats, neighbours, friends- people like us - who stood by passively or joined in actively, in the long-term, carefully planned, enthusiastically implemented process of stripping Jews and others of their rights, property, dignity and, ultimately, lives. The Center does a careful, relentless job of drawing us into the lives of individuals, and the more impersonal political and legal processes that were involved. The narrative is compelling, illustrated with a multitude of documents, as well as audio-visual and print narratives and resources. Some of these weren't completely intuitive to make function, but that did not distract from the power of the overall story being told. Physically, the Center takes you on a journey, with descents and ascents which help the transitions through the overall story, culminating in a reconstructed synagogue (all the more poignant for being completely empty when we visited) where some time to reflect and be aware of the empty chairs in that place is an appropriate end point. The presentation provided the best context we have seen (in our travels through France, Austria, Prague, Krakow and now Budapest) for how this process, and the bureaucratic implementation of it -which represents, to me, the real evil of the Holocaust- happened in not only Hungary, but more broadly. This is a hard story to experience - as it should be. And a necessary one. The Holocaust Memorial Center tells the story well, and is worth the time and effort to visit.
7. Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker Museum
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 4,863 reviews
The Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker Museum is a thrilling, unique and moving place. Visitors can learn about the WWII and the 1956 revolution as well as the Cold War in relation to this former TOP SECRET nuclear bunker. It had an important role during the war and it was classified until 2002 and opened as a museum in 2008. The place ensures a real time warp into the past. Mobiles are not working inside. Do not expect a regular museum. One hour long tour departs every hour in English. Guide books are available in several languages. Unforgettable experience underneath the Castle Hill. The entrance is only about 5 minutes walk from the famous Matthias-Church of Buda.
Reviewed By rushmere86 - Wilstead, United Kingdom
What an incredible place, we thoroughly enjoyed our guided tour around this fascinating piece of history,our particular tour was in English (some tours are in other languages with a recorderd translation device,worth checking before you book)and we found the guide very knowledgeable and informative
8. Hungarian Railway Museum (Magyar Vasuttorteneti Park)
9. Zwack Heritage and Visitors' Centre
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 216 reviews
Come visit us for an experience for every sense! Get to know the adventurous story of the Zwack family as told by them and discover in our museum the history of Unicum with the help of old documents, bottles, family photos and . You can look behind the curtains of the making of Unicum in our distillery and cellar and to end the tour in style, you can have a taste of Unicum and Unicum Plum directly from the barrel! (We don't provide tasting for visitors under the age of 18.) After the tour you can discover our wide selection of beverages and Unicum souvenirs!
Reviewed By 884t_meak - Budapest, Hungary
I visited Zwack Visitor's Centre in September in 2019 with my collegues from Hungary and from abroad too. We had a great 2 hours of visiting the three-storied exhibition with a short documentary film about the Zwack family and firm, and many objects and documents, photos about the famous Hungarian "medicinal liqueur", Zwack Unicum. In the distillatory we had the chance to taste 3 types of Unicums - they were extraordinary, especially the one with plum. The guide was very friendly, he told us interesting stories. After it we had dinner in the Centre's restaurant with Hungarian specialities, all of them was really tasty and good. It was an interesting trip for me as a Hungarian citizen as well too; visit and see a family firm like this, how they rised, survived and succeed through the decades of history.
10. Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 107 reviews
Reviewed By 21ingos - Karlsruhe, Germany
The museum is very small - only seven or eight rooms - but it is worth visiting repeatedly every year because they regularly change all their exhibitions. Only the two rooms about Robert Capa are on permanent display. Capa created timeless classics - probably no need to say more about him. But i found the temporary exhibitions even more impressive. They typically present the oeuvres of one or two Hungarian photographers from specific epoques of photography - this time it was Géza Perneczky's (*1936) conceptual photography and Katalin Nádor (1938-2018), who worked as a museum photographer in Pécs and devolped a strikingly original style of experimental and lyrical artistic photography in parallel, playing with light, surfaces, multiple exposure and other creative techniques. The exhibition catalogue says, quite to the point: "Her secret artistic life reflected the life of creative women working in rural Hungary during the years of Socialism: her work as an artist evolved quietly, without any attention or acknowledgment from the professional scene, in spite of her peculiar, sensual experimentations, and the unique subjective abstraction characteristic of her photographs." Yet the best part of the museum - at least this year, and at least according to my taste - was the presentation of the two winners of the Capa Grand Prize 2019: Antal Bánhegyesy's photos of orthodox churches and christian life in Romania, almost every photo stunning in a different way: some just magnificient, some exhibiting incredible contrast in architecture or other motives, some wonderfully ironic. And then András D. Hajdú's photo series "Szofi’s Life", following the life of young Hungarian Gypsy girl and her family from her mother's pregnancy to kindergarden age (to be continued), presented in an unconventional style that well matches the subject. This is more than just a museum, it is probably even more important for fostering and promoting modern Hungarian photography through the Grand Prize.
