Free audio walk in Budapest
Belváros, the city center of Pest
- 98 min
- 4.5 km
- 14 stops
- Free
Starts at Vörösmarty tér
About this walk
The inner city of Pest can be explored on foot in a single morning, and in that morning you'll pass a Roman bridgehead, a revolution that started at a café table, and a prayer niche from the Turkish era set into a church wall.
The stops
Walk them in order; each story plays when you reach its pin.
- 1Stop 1
Vörösmarty tér, where the inner city comes together
The square that changed its name three times, with a poet in Carrara marble and a pastry shop that lost its own name for thirty-six years.
- 2Stop 2
Pilvax köz, where 15 March 1848 began
The coffee house where the 1848 revolution began, which went by three names before it was torn down in 1913.
Read the story - 3Stop 3
Szervita tér, the bank with heaven on its forehead
A bank that filled its facade with glass and hung the nation's history above it, after an earlier design had stuck to money.
Read the story - 4Stop 4
The Invalides House, too big for its own street
The largest building in Pest, built for disabled soldiers on the Parisian model, and never finished because the city refused to give up its own wall.
Read the story - 5Stop 5
The boatman of the great flood
A baron who spent days rowing from roof to roof, and a diary that also names the rescuers who only picked up the rich.
Read the story - 6Stop 6
The Párisi udvar, an arcade under glass
A building that cut off its own corner to make a fifth facade, with the last glass-roofed shopping arcade in Budapest hidden behind it.
Read the story - 7Stop 7
A Swedish King Passing Through
A Swedish king who rode through Europe on horseback for a fortnight and slept here for a single night, with a plaque in two languages to prove it.
Read the story - 8Stop 8
The church the Paulines carved themselves
A church on the site of a mosque, filled with carvings by monks from an order that was dissolved soon afterwards.
Read the story - 9Stop 9
The Károlyi garden behind the wall
The oldest garden in the city, where a prime minister sat down to dinner and was taken away that very evening.
Read the story - 10Stop 10
The Serbian Church on Szerb utca
Behind a yellow wall lies a garden whose floor shows the old street level of Pest, with gravestones set into the wall.
Read the story - 11Stop 11
The Roman fort beneath the square
Beneath this square lies the Roman fort that guarded the crossing, and its stones ended up in half of Pest.
Read the story - 12Stop 12
The church with a prayer niche facing Mecca
The oldest building in Pest, with an Islamic prayer niche set into the wall of the Catholic choir.
Read the story - 13Stop 13
The Square of the National Song
The square where the same poem shaped history twice, with the church of the Greek merchants standing behind it.
Read the story - 14Stop 14
Fischer Rézi on Kristóf tér
A girl with a fish who moved from the fish market to a park, disappeared, and came back out of a warehouse, on a square named after a vanished giant.
Read the story
Ready when you are
Walk Belváros, the city center of Pest with ROODS.
14 stops through Budapest, about 98 minutes. Open ROODS in your browser, walk to the first pin and the story plays.
- Stories on a map, with narrated audio
- Walk at your own pace, stop where you like
- Runs in your browser. An app is optional.
