Top tours in Budapest, Hungary

Learn more about Budapest

While modern Budapest is a single megacity, it didn’t start like that. In fact, before 1873, there was no “Budapest” at all! There were Buda, Pest and Óbuda instead. What were those? Well, they were three separate towns. However, if you want to go really deep and to the very beginning, you need to take a look at the first settlements of Celts. Yes, the first people who settled the terrain of contemporary Budapest were Celts! They quickly became occupied by the Romans, who built the city of Aquincum. It was Romans who built first of the first iconic heated baths and terms in what would be Budapest 1800 years later! Aquincum got destroyed, true, but it remains one of the best-preserved Roman sites. Make sure to visit the museum dedicated to it.
Buda and Pest were founded by Bulgarian settlers much later, around the 9th century. The Magyar tribes of Árpád. This is where the kingdom of Hungary was founded! Of the cities that were destined to become Budapest, Buda was particularly favored by the Hungarian rulers, especially King Matthias Corvinus.
However, it wasn’t Hungarians who truly recognized the bath potential of Buda after the Romans, but Turks. It was the Ottoman Turks who truly seized the terms potential of Buda. Some of their constructions are still in active use, 500 years later! While thermal and medicinal baths accompanied Budapest for most of its history, it only became known worldwide as the City of Spas in 1920. The world fell in love with The Széchenyi Medicinal Bath, the largest medicinal bath on the continent.