Budapest: A Critical Guide

Café Central, left of the entrance, the informal part, near the window

The most traditional of the traditional cafés, you wouldn't tell that it did not operate between 1949 and 2000. There were offices, then a university club, even later a game parlour here. Here you can find the second fanciest and perhaps a most spacious toilet in town - the designer managed to persuade the owner to drop a function room to have enough space down there. Centrál has an elegant café and a restaurant part as well. (V. Károlyi Mihály utca 16., corner of Irányi utca.)

On a Bench at the Fun Fountain of West End Center

The shopping center was built on previously unused railway land. Today there are some 440 shops, a cinema a 4-star hotel and office space, an interesting roof garden, and other things. The center of the complex is a rectangular, basement to top space called "millennium Square. Here there is a fountain that mesmerizes passers by. 8 thin computer-controlled beams of water that dance together, apparently contradict the laws of Newton. It amuses people from all walks of life, who sit around it, on benches and laugh. (Between V. Nyugati tér and Ferdinánd railway bridge.) 

The André Kertész Room of Mai Manó House

On the first floor of a great and lesser known landmark building, built by a highly successful commercial photographer, Manó May (1857-1917), an exhibition hall of photography these days. There are never crowds here, except for openings. On weekdays it is open from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., at weekends and holidays it opens earlier, at 11.00. There is a modest entrance fee and a great photo bookshop. (VI. Nagymező utca 20, at the corner of Andrássy út.)

Lukács Cukrászda: "The Bridge"

Lukács has been open since 1912. During the Communist years it first operated as the cafeteria of the dreaded secret service (now: House of Terror, next door), then it reopened with the most stupid (even untranslatable) name: "Különlegességi" (perhaps "Patisseries des Specialités"). At the corner of the shop you there are half a dozen steps upwards. That leads to the open part you should sit, if you can. You can comfortably scan all the arriving patrons from there. Iván Mándy, the short story writer used to sit here at one of the tables in the 1960s. (VI. Andrássy út 70, corner of Izabella utca.) 

Urania Cinema: The café upstairs

You would not think it is so interesting inside. The Moorish Revival cinema meticulously restored by 2002, originally a cabaret, later a lecture hall where popular science was popularized with the aid of slides, in the first years of the 20^th century. Deserted, but pleasant  during the day. (VII. Rákóczi út 21.)

Batthyány tér Market Upstairs

The brick-clad traditional market-hall was completed some ten years later than the other similar five institutions: in 1905. It sticks out as a sore thumb from among the mid 18^th century residential blocks. Downstairs there is a supermarket, upstairs there are small shops and an elegant café at the windows, that give you a rare and unusual panorama on the nicest square of Budapest and Parliament, on the other side of the river. (

The Used Book Section of Alexandra Book Store, in Károly körút

Currently the biggest bookshop in Hungary, a trendy place, with giant photos of writers and celebrities. The name of the chain is named after the daughter of the owner, a former street vendor from a provincial town, who has not even got a university degree - just an impeccable sense of quality. (VII. Károly körút 3., corner of Dob utca.)