This is some storage room. I’m standing in the middle of a magnificent, basilica-style chamber with zodiac motifs, saintly images and king-splattered murals festooned on every mighty column and towering wall. For 70 years this room at Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts was hidden away from the public. Then the brains behind a museum-wide, £35 million renovation clocked that this was something of a waste.
At the end of last year this stunning space, known as the Romanesque Hall, opened to the public for the first time since the Second World War, along with the rest of the restored museum, which had been closed for three years. The rebooted building is the first result of a continuing project in Varosliget, the surrounding park, which will later yield a new national gallery and a biodome at Budapest Zoo.
The museum has three floors of classical European paintings and sculptures. I take in some Bruegel landscapes, followed by a shiny El Greco effort. It portrays Jesus and an angel on the Mount of Olives, while Judas and some soldiers tiptoe up from behind and other disciples snooze in the foreground. A lot is happening, and I don’t know where to look first.
Which is also my issue with Budapest in general. Bursting with castles, museums and monuments, Hungary’s capital has more sights than I’ll ever fit into a weekend, at least not one that’s vaguely relaxing. So I arrange a guide, Ildi Asztalos, for a tailor-made tour — one gentle on history, and including some local sights.
We begin with food (always good): first, a small farmers’ market that tourists never visit, before a bigger one that they always do. At the small one, held daily on Hunyadi Square, 80 or so hawkers offer honeys and red onion-spiked cottage cheeses that I happily sample. Prices are punch-the-air cheap: two plum-piped pastries cost 50p. The much busier place is the Great Market Hall, an arched neoclassical structure near the Danube. Here I learn that vitamin C was first synthesised from Hungary’s acclaimed paprika, available here in pepper form.
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Back in our car, Ildi talks geography, explaining that the two locales of Buda and Pest on either side of the Danube are very different: Buda is hilly and where many wealthy people live, whereas Pest is flat and the real city. We cross into Buda via the much-photographed Chain Bridge, modelled on Marlow Bridge over the Thames in Buckinghamshire.
Ignoring a funicular, we drive up to Matthias Church, a late-gothic conceit with stained-glass windows and crimson-coloured walls that’s part of the Castle District. Ildi tells of grim times when Soviet occupiers stormed this building. Much earlier, when the Ottomans were under siege here, they happened on a statue of the Virgin Mary in a secret room — yep, another storage room. They surrendered within a day; cue no end of divine-intervention analysis. Outside is the white-domed Fisherman’s Bastion open space, its balconies affording glorious views over the Danube into pizza-flat Pest, now dappled in sun.
Afterwards I look in Herend, a porcelain shop that supplied William and Harry’s weddings, and then coo at the Dohany Street Synagogue, Europe’s largest.
I eat at Mak, one of Budapest’s most forward-thinking restaurants. Below crude silver pipes and a white, arched ceiling, I’m served a delicious celeriac velouté and then a wonderfully rich neck of beef with pine shoots and cashew wisps. Even the bread and butter are sensational. It’s fine dining, but administered by trainer-wearing staff and sold at prices for trainer-wearing customers: a three-course lunch costs £13 (mak.hu).
Suitably stuffed, I cross the Unesco- protected Andrassy boulevard, on which brands such as Louis Vuitton occupy handsome, neo-Renaissance buildings, and enter the scruffier Jewish Quarter. Here are Pest’s “ruin bars”, institutions in dilapidated buildings, plus street-art murals and a clutch of cool coffee bars.
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Time for a much-needed dip at one of the city’s famous thermal bath houses. Ildi has run me through myriad options and I plump for the most legendary, Gellert. The many columns in its opulent main gallery remind me vaguely of the Romanesque Hall. It’s perfect for a wallow in a steamy corner, where I enjoy the soothing scorch on my tired muscles.
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Richard Mellor was a guest of Cox & Kings (020 3642 0861, coxandkings.co.uk), which has three-night Budapest breaks from £465pp, including flights from Heathrow, private transfers and B&B. A half-day private city tour of Budapest by car costs with Ildi £163pp
The budget hotel: Eurostars Budapest Centre
Close to Astoria metro station and within walking distance of most sights, this functional four-star has demure rooms with lots of space. The breakfast buffet is vast and there’s a small fitness room and sauna. B&B doubles cost from £45 a night (eurostarshotels.co.uk)
The luxury hotel: Four Seasons Gresham Palace
Set near the Chain Bridge, this art nouveau confection screams opulence with its million mosaic tiles, huge chandelier and gold-flecked façade. A cavernous spa adds to the pomp. B&B doubles cost from £352 a night (fourseasons.com)
