Budget · 3-hour walk · Budapest
Pest and the Jewish Quarter in three hours
The great market hall, the synagogue, the ruin bars and the boulevard between them.
The six-hour route is the Buda side — the castle, the bastion, the hill. This is flat Pest, which is where Budapest actually lives: a 19th-century grid of apartment blocks with the largest synagogue in Europe in the middle of it and the ruin-bar district built into the courtyards around. Start at the market before the tour groups and finish with a drink in a bombed-out building.
The route, stop by stop
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Great Market Hall
Iron and Zsolnay tile, opened in 1897 and still the city's main produce market downstairs. Paprika and sausage on the ground floor, lángos upstairs, tourists everywhere.
40 min here Walk here → -
Dohány Street Synagogue
The largest in Europe and the second largest in the world, in Moorish revival brick. The memorial garden behind it is a mass grave from the winter of 1944.
50 min here Walk here → -
Gozsdu Courtyard
Seven courtyards linked into a single passage through a whole city block, now bars and restaurants end to end.
25 min here Walk here → -
Szimpla Kert
The original ruin bar, in a derelict apartment building left deliberately derelict. Open from lunchtime and much calmer then; a farmers' market fills it on Sunday mornings.
40 min here Walk here →
More in Budapest
Every walking route in Budapest, or the full Budapest guide for where to stay and what a day costs.