Andrássy Út, Heroes’ Square and City Park in Budapest

Andrássy út is Budapest’s grand boulevard, running 2.3 kilometres from the inner city to Heroes’ Square and City Park. Built in the 1870s in conscious imitation of the Champs-Élysées, it is now, along with the Buda Castle Quarter and the Danube banks, part of Budapest’s UNESCO World Heritage inscription.

Walking the Boulevard

Andrássy út is lined with grand 19th-century townhouses, embassies, and cultural institutions. The Hungarian State Opera House, a Neo-Renaissance building from 1884, sits roughly a third of the way along; guided tours run during the day, and check the opera’s own site for performances and ticket prices. Further along, the House of Terror museum, in the former headquarters of the fascist and later communist secret police, documents both totalitarian periods of 20th-century Hungarian history in a building whose facade alone is a memorial.

The M1 Metro

Running beneath Andrássy út is the Millennium Underground Railway, Metro line M1, opened in 1896 as the first underground railway in continental Europe. The small tiled stations, several largely unchanged, are themselves part of the UNESCO listing. Riding a stop or two on the M1 is worth doing for its own sake.

Heroes’ Square and the Millennium Monument

Andrássy út terminates at Heroes’ Square (Hősök tere), dominated by the Millennium Monument: a colonnade of statues depicting Hungary’s historical leaders, anchored by a central column topped with the Archangel Gabriel, built for the same 1896 millennial celebrations as the Parliament. The square is flanked by the Museum of Fine Arts and the Palace of Art (Műcsarnok), Hungary’s two major art museums.

City Park

Beyond Heroes’ Square lies Városliget (City Park), Budapest’s largest park and home to Széchenyi Baths, Vajdahunyad Castle (a fantastical 1896 pastiche of Hungarian architectural styles built for the same millennial exhibition, now housing the Agricultural Museum), and the Budapest Zoo. The park is undergoing a long-running redevelopment (the Liget Budapest project) that has added new museum buildings in recent years.