The M1: continental Europe's first underground railway, still running

London had an underground railway from 1863. The second city in the world to get one, and the first on the European continent, was Budapest — in 1896.

Why it was built, and why so fast

The city was preparing for the millennium: a thousand years since the Magyar arrival in the Carpathian Basin, marked in 1896 with an exhibition in the City Park and a building programme across the capital.

Andrássy Avenue had been finished in 1885 and the city wanted a rail link along it out to the exhibition grounds — but the avenue was the new showpiece boulevard and nobody was willing to put tram tracks down the middle of it.

The answer was to put the line underneath. Construction took about twenty months. It opened in May 1896 and was named after Franz Joseph, who rode it.

What makes it unusual

It is shallow. The M1 sits about three metres below the surface, in a cut-and-cover box directly under the roadway. You go down one short flight of steps, not an escalator, and the platforms are directly beneath the pavement.

The trains are small. The carriages are short and low, because the tunnel is. Riding it feels closer to a tram that happens to be indoors than to a metro.

It was preserved rather than replaced. The stations retain their wooden-framed ticket halls, tiling and cast-iron columns. It was restored for its centenary in 1996 and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2002, as part of the Andrássy Avenue listing.

It is a working line with a full timetable, and a ride costs a standard ticket. There is no other UNESCO site in Europe you can travel through for the price of a bus fare.

Ride it between Vörösmarty tér and Hősök tere, which takes about eight minutes and passes under the Opera and the House of Terror.

The other three lines

M2 (red), opened 1970, runs east-west under the Danube, connecting Déli station on the Buda side with Keleti station and out east. It is deep, Soviet-built, and its river crossing was a serious piece of engineering.

M3 (blue), opened from 1976, is the long north-south line down the Pest side, from Újpest to Kőbánya-Kispest — which is where the 200E bus from the airport connects. Its stations and rolling stock were comprehensively renovated in a project that ran through the 2010s and early 2020s.

M4 (green), opened 2014, is the newest and looks it: deep, automated, driverless, with architecturally ambitious stations that won prizes and cost a great deal of argument. It runs from Kelenföld in south Buda to Keleti, and Szent Gellért tér — for the Gellért Baths — is one of its best stations.

All four meet, in pairs, at Deák Ferenc tér, which is why that square functions as the city's centre of gravity.

Riding it

The getting around page covers tickets properly, but the essentials:

• Validate before you travel, or use a travelcard.
• The M1 is covered by ordinary tickets, as is the cogwheel railway up into the Buda hills, which is technically line 60.
• The 100E airport bus is not covered by an ordinary single — it needs its own dedicated ticket. This catches more visitors than any other rule in the system.
• Inspectors work the barriers at station exits as well as entrances.

Contactless now works on the metro. BKK's Pay&GO system went live across all four metro lines in April 2026: tap a contactless bank card or phone at the gate and the fare is charged directly, with no ticket to buy or validate beforehand. It is the single biggest practical improvement to the system in years, and it removes the most common visitor mistake — riding on an unvalidated ticket.

The one that is not a metro

The HÉV suburban railway looks like a metro on the map and is not: separate network, separate fare rules beyond the city boundary, and the way you reach Óbuda, Aquincum, Csepel and Szentendre. Inside Budapest a normal ticket covers it; past the boundary you need a supplement.

A small pleasure

The M1's stations each have a slightly different tile scheme and signage, and Vörösmarty tér has a small museum in a disused section of tunnel. Fifteen minutes, a normal ticket, and one of the more surprising things you can do in a city centre.

The trams, which matter as much

Budapest's metro is small by the standards of a city this size — four lines — and the reason is that the tram network does most of the work.

Tram 4 and 6 run around the Grand Boulevard and are among the busiest tram lines in the world, with services through the night and some of the longest trams in service anywhere. If you are staying anywhere on the boulevard, this is your line rather than the metro.

Tram 2 runs along the Pest embankment past the Parliament and is regularly listed among the most scenic tram routes in Europe. It costs a normal ticket and takes twenty minutes end to end — the cheapest sightseeing in the city.

Tram 47 and 49 cross the river to Gellért and south Buda.

The other historic lines

Two more pieces of nineteenth-century transport are still running and both take ordinary tickets:

The cogwheel railway, line 60, has climbed from Városmajor to Széchenyi Hill on a rack rail since 1874. It is a scheduled BKK service, which means a normal travelcard covers a mountain railway.

The Buda Castle funicular, from 1870, is sixty seconds long, does not take BKK tickets, and is worth it once — see Castle Hill.

And in the Buda hills there is the Children's Railway, staffed by ten to fourteen-year-olds, and the Libegő chairlift. Neither is covered by a transport ticket, and both are covered in the family guide.