The city
Budapest — the city itself
Reference pages on the place rather than the trip: its history, its architecture, how the districts came to be numbered, and why a city of two million has more thermal springs than any other capital in Europe.
The Danube in Budapest: the river that made two cities oneBuda and Pest faced each other across the water for eight centuries before anything permanent crossed it. Everything about the city follows from that.7 August 2026 · 9 min read
Hungarian: why it sounds like nothing else in EuropeSurrounded by Slavic and Germanic neighbours, Hungarian is related to neither. Its closest relatives are spoken 2,000 km away.31 July 2026 · 9 min read
Jewish Budapest: the quarter, the ghetto, and what survivedBefore 1944 Budapest had the largest Jewish community in Europe outside the Soviet Union. This is what happened to it, and what is still there.24 July 2026 · 10 min read
1956: the twelve days Budapest fought the Soviet UnionIt began as a student march and ended with tanks. The sites are all still standing, and most visitors walk past them without knowing.20 July 2026 · 9 min read
Aquincum: the Roman city under BudapestThirty thousand people, two amphitheatres and a water organ, on the frontier of the empire — eight hundred years before Buda existed.10 July 2026 · 8 min read
The Ottoman century and a half, and what it left behindThe Turks held Buda for 145 years. Almost nothing they built survives — except the thing the city is now most famous for.6 July 2026 · 8 min read
Reading Budapest: an era-by-era guide to what you are looking atMost of the city went up in forty years. Once you know which forty, the whole place becomes legible.29 June 2026 · 9 min read
The coffee house century: when Budapest had five hundred of themWriters had their own tables and their mail delivered there. At the peak, the city had around five hundred cafés — and then, almost overnight, it had none.19 June 2026 · 8 min read
Forty years of communism, and what Budapest kept from itHungary was called the happiest barracks in the bloc. It was still a barracks, and a third of the city still lives in what it built.12 June 2026 · 8 min read
The city with a cave system underneath itOver two hundred caves under one capital, a wartime hospital in the rock, and a church the state sealed in concrete for thirty-eight years.10 June 2026 · 8 min read
The forint: why Hungary is not on the euro, and what that means for youA currency that once hit the worst hyperinflation in recorded history, and the four practical rules that stop it costing you money today.1 June 2026 · 8 min read
Where Hungarian food actually comes fromThe ingredient the whole cuisine is built on arrived from the Americas via the Ottomans, and was peasant food for two hundred years before anyone respectable would cook with it.22 May 2026 · 9 min read
Hungarian wine: the country that invented the sweet wine kings drankTokaji was made from botrytised grapes a century before Sauternes, and had the first classified vineyard system in the world. Then the twentieth century happened.15 May 2026 · 8 min read
The M1: continental Europe's first underground railway, still runningOpened in 1896, three metres below Andrássy Avenue, with wooden-framed stations that are still in daily service. It costs a normal ticket to ride a UNESCO site.6 May 2026 · 8 min read
1867 and 1896: the deal and the deadline that built BudapestA political settlement gave the city money and status. A thousandth anniversary gave it a deadline. Almost everything you photograph comes from the gap between them.4 May 2026 · 9 min read
Music in Budapest: Liszt, Bartók, and a method that changed the worldTwo composers walked into Hungarian villages with a phonograph and came back with a different idea of what music could be. The academy is still named after the first one.27 April 2026 · 8 min read
The statues Budapest argues aboutA liberation monument that kept its statue but lost its plaque, a Soviet obelisk that will not go away, and a memorial the city protests against with suitcases.17 April 2026 · 8 min read
How Budapest's districts workTwenty-three numbered districts, a spiral, and a postcode that tells you exactly where you are.22 January 2026 · 2 min read
Why Budapest has a hundred thermal springsA geological accident that put a capital city directly on top of a fault line, with hot water coming out of it.19 January 2026 · 2 min read
A short history of BudapestRoman garrison, Ottoman province, imperial second capital, siege, Soviet satellite. Most of it is still visible.16 January 2026 · 2 min read