Alpine & Central Europe
Hungary
A thermal-water capital on the Danube, a language related to almost nothing, and sweet wine that outlived empires.
- Capital
- City
- Destination
- Hungary
Hungary sits on a plain of hot springs — Budapest alone has over a hundred, and the bathing culture runs from Roman to Ottoman to imperial. The language is Finno-Ugric and unrelated to any neighbour, which has shaped a certain separateness. Beyond the capital there is Lake Balaton, the volcanic wine hills above it, and Tokaj, where botrytised wine was made a century before Sauternes.
Getting around
Budapest's metro line 1 is the oldest on the continent after London and still running. Trains reach Balaton, Eger and Tokaj slowly and cheaply. The capital is walkable and its trams are useful.
When to come
Budapest is good year-round and the outdoor thermal baths are best in January, steaming in the cold. Balaton is a summer place and dead outside it. Harvest in Tokaj is October, late.
Worth knowing
- The forint, not the euro; exchange rates at street bureaux are usually terrible.
- In the baths, bring flip-flops and a towel or hire both; some pools require a cap.
- Ruin bars occupy derelict courtyards in the old Jewish quarter, which is also a memorial district — the two coexist awkwardly.
At the table
- Paprika, in everything, and not interchangeable with chilli
- Goulash, which is a soup here and not a stew
- Tokaji Aszú, sweet, ancient and unlike any other dessert wine
Travel regions
2 editorial regions, each opening onto its cities.
Popular destinations
The destinations we have written most about, which is not the same as the ones most people go to — and is the only ranking we can honestly compute.
Budapest
Hilly Buda and flat Pest, joined by bridges, with a parliament on the water and a hundred hot springs underneath.
Tokaj
The world's first classified wine region, from 1737, on volcanic slopes at a river confluence.
Szentendre
A Serbian Orthodox artists' town on the river, forty minutes from the capital by suburban rail.
Tihany, Lake Balaton
A lavender peninsula with an abbey on a cliff, sticking into a shallow warm lake.
Experiences here
A sample of what is listed across Hungary.
An outdoor thermal bath in winter
38°C water, snow on the stone, and old men playing chess on floating boards. Go early; go on a weekday.
A ruin bar, before it fills
Derelict courtyard buildings filled with salvaged furniture; Szimpla was the first and is still worth an early evening.
A mouldy cellar in Tokaj
The black fungus on the walls regulates humidity and is left alone deliberately; taste dry furmint first and six-puttonyos last.
Journeys through Hungary
The Journey Planner holds all 4 of these destinations and the real distances between them. It opens on 6 days, which is the shortest stay this atlas records for each of them added up — change the length, the month, the budget or the pace and build it again.
Stories set here
Fixed points in the year
The record
What we hold about Hungary, where each figure came from, and when it was last checked. The score says what this country is for, not how good it is — it is useful once you are already interested and is not a reason to be.
- Capital
- Budapest
- Currency
- HUF — Hungarian forint
- Languages
- Hungarian
- Population
- 9,769,949 (2019) — Natural Earth 1:50m admin 0 countries
- ISO codes
- HU · HUN
- Time zone
- CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
- Membership
- European Union, Schengen area, European Economic Area
- Typical day
- €40–105 per person ≈ Ft15,800–41,500 indicative
- Best months
- May, June, July, August, September
- Quieter months
- April, October
- Facts checked
- not verified why this matters
Europe Experience Score
How this is calculated — derived from our own tagging, not from measurement. It says what a place is for, not how good it is. The tick on each bar is the median across the whole Atlas, so a bar short of it is a dimension this place is not for.