Rebecca Engel
Vienna and Prague get most of the Christmas market attention in this corner of Europe. Budapest does the same thing for a fraction of the price, and it has one advantage neither of them can match, which is a city built on top of hot springs.
The markets here are small enough to walk between in a single afternoon, and the rest of the city keeps going long after the stalls shut. These are seventeen things to do in Budapest at Christmas, from the Advent fair in front of the Basilica to a thermal pool with snow sitting on the railings, plus a note at the end on when the markets actually open.
1. Start At The Vörösmarty Square Christmas Market
Vörösmarty Square holds the biggest of the city’s Christmas markets, with more than a hundred and fifty stalls packed into one square at the top of Váci Street. It’s the one most people mean when they say the Budapest Christmas market.
The crafts here are the real thing rather than imported filler, because vendors have to be approved before they’re allowed to sell. Expect ceramics, wool, leather and wooden toys sitting alongside the food stalls.
A large Advent wreath stands in the middle of the square, and on the Sundays before Christmas a candle gets lit with choral singing around it. It’s worth building an afternoon around one of those.
Café Gerbeaud sits right on the edge of the square and has been there since 1858. If the queue is long, and it usually is, the stalls out front do the same job for a lot less money.
2. Walk The Advent Fair At St. Stephen’s Basilica
The Advent fair in front of St. Stephen’s Basilica is the prettier of the two central markets, mostly because of what it’s standing in front of.
A Christmas tree goes up in the middle of the square, and a small ice rink runs beside it for children. The stalls lean more toward food than crafts, so this is the one to arrive at hungry.
It’s roughly a fifteen minute walk from Vörösmarty Square, which means there’s no reason to choose between them. Most people do both in the same evening.
Go after dark if there’s any choice in it. The square is closed to traffic and the whole fair sits inside a ring of lit up buildings.
3. Watch The Light Show Painted On The Basilica
Every half hour through the evening, the front of St. Stephen’s Basilica turns into a screen. A projection runs across the entire facade, wrapping the columns and the dome in colour, and it’s billed as the largest 3D Christmas projection in Europe.
It’s free, it runs from early evening until late, and you don’t need glasses for it. Stalls at the market hand out 3D glasses if you want the full effect, but the show reads perfectly well without them.
The square fills up a few minutes before each showing. It’s worth arriving with a mulled wine already in hand rather than trying to buy one at the last minute.
This is the most photographed thing in the city in December, and it earns it.
4. Get A Chimney Cake Straight Off The Charcoal
Kürtőskalács is the one Hungarian thing to eat at a Christmas market, and it’s worth walking past the first three stalls to find one being made properly.
The dough gets wrapped in a spiral around a wooden cylinder, rolled in sugar and baked over charcoal until the outside caramelises. It comes off the spit hollow, which is where the English name chimney cake comes from.
The good stalls bake to order and hand it over hot enough that you have to keep swapping hands. The bad ones have a rack of them sitting under a heat lamp.
Plain cinnamon is the classic version. Walnut and cocoa are both good, and the ones stuffed with ice cream are a summer idea that somehow migrated into December.
5. Cross The River To The Óbuda Advent Fair
Óbuda is the old Roman quarter up in District III, and its Advent fair is the one Hungarian families actually go to.
It fills the main square, Fő tér, around a tall tree, with more of the programme spilling onto Szentlélek tér a couple of minutes away. The stalls are cheaper and the crowd is almost entirely local.
It sits about twenty minutes out from the centre on the HÉV suburban train or the tram, which is exactly why the tour groups don’t bother with it.
Go on a weekend afternoon when the stage programme is running. This is the closest thing to a neighbourhood Christmas anywhere in the city.
6. Do Your Christmas Shopping At The Great Market Hall
The Great Market Hall is worth seeing in any season for the iron frame and the tiled roof, but December is when it becomes genuinely useful.
The ground floor is food, which is where the paprika, the salami and the Tokaji wine live. Those are the three things almost everybody ends up taking home.
The upstairs gallery is embroidery, lace, painted eggs and wooden toys, and it’s the best place in the city to solve an entire present list in one go without setting foot in a mall.
There’s a row of food stalls up there too. Get lángos, which is fried dough loaded with sour cream and cheese, and accept that it’s going to defeat you.
7. Sit In The Steam At Széchenyi Baths
Budapest sits on more than a hundred thermal springs, and Széchenyi is the largest and best known of the bathhouses built on top of them.
The whole point in winter is the outdoor pools. They stay hot while the air very much doesn’t, so the courtyard fills with steam and everyone in it is up to their shoulders in warm water with snow on the railings.
It’s one of the biggest spa complexes in Europe, with a dozen or more indoor pools as well as the outdoor ones. Bring flip flops and a towel, or pay a lot to rent them at the door.
Book online in advance, because the December queue is long and it’s outdoors. If it still looks too busy, the Gellért Baths across the river are quieter and arguably prettier, with an Art Nouveau hall of coloured glass and mosaic tiling.
8. Take In The Danube From The Rudas Rooftop Pool
Rudas is the Ottoman era bath, built in the sixteenth century, and it still has its original domed chamber with daylight coming through coloured glass set into the roof.
The reason to come is on top of it. A round pool sits on the roof looking straight across the Danube at the Pest side, and sitting in hot water at night with the city lit up in front of you is hard to beat in December.
Check the schedule before going. Parts of Rudas run single sex on certain weekdays, and the rooftop pool is booked in time slots rather than walked into.
It’s smaller and far less of a spectacle than Széchenyi. That’s most of the appeal.
9. Skate In Front Of Vajdahunyad Castle
The City Park ice rink has been running since 1870, which makes it one of the oldest in Europe, and it’s also one of the largest outdoor rinks on the continent.
What makes it worth the trip out is the backdrop. The rink sits directly in front of Vajdahunyad Castle, a nineteenth century mixture of Gothic, Baroque and Romanesque styles that looks like something out of a storybook.
Skates rent on site, so there’s nothing to carry across the city. It gets busiest in the evening once the castle is lit.
It’s a five minute walk from Széchenyi, which makes an afternoon of skating followed by a thermal bath not just possible but the obvious plan.
10. Ride The Christmas Light Tram Along The Danube
From early December the transport company wraps a handful of trams, buses and trolleybuses in thousands of LEDs and sends them out on ordinary service.
They run normal routes on a normal ticket, so this costs the price of a single fare. The one to aim for runs along the Pest embankment, which is the prettiest tram route in the city on a completely ordinary day.
Timetables showing which vehicles are decorated get posted each December. Standing on a bridge and watching one slide past is honestly as good as riding it.
It’s the cheapest thing on this list and one of the best.
11. Sail Past A Lit Up Parliament After Dark
The Parliament building is the most impressive thing in Budapest, and it’s at its absolute best lit up at night seen from the water.
Evening cruises run constantly along the stretch between the Margaret Bridge and the Liberty Bridge, which takes in the Parliament, the Chain Bridge, Buda Castle and Gellért Hill in about an hour.
The cheap ones are a boat with a drink included. The expensive ones add dinner and live music, and the view is identical from both.
Sit outside if the boat has an open deck and the cold is bearable. Photographs taken through a fogged window are not the same thing at all.
12. See Fisherman’s Bastion With Snow On The Turrets
Fisherman’s Bastion is the white terrace of towers and arcades up on the Buda hill, built in the late nineteenth century as a viewing platform rather than a fortification, which is why it looks like a film set.
Seven turrets stand for the seven Magyar tribes that settled the country. Below them the whole Pest skyline lines up along the river, with the Parliament sitting directly opposite.
Most of the terraces are free to walk at any hour. Only the upper towers charge, and in winter that charge often lifts entirely.
Come at dusk. The stone goes warm under the lights, and the crowds thin right out once the tour buses head back down the hill.
13. Order Hot Chocolate At The New York Café
The New York Café opened in 1894 and has a fair claim to being the most ornate café in the world, with gilded ceilings, twisted marble columns and chandeliers hanging over two floors.
It’s also a tourist attraction with prices to match, and there’s usually a queue outside. Walking in already knowing that helps a lot.
Order the hot chocolate rather than a full meal. It’s thick enough to stand a spoon in and it costs a fraction of what lunch in there does.
There’s live piano through most of the day. Sitting in a room like that with something hot while it’s freezing outside is the entire point of the exercise.
14. Catch A Winter Performance At The Hungarian State Opera House
The Hungarian State Opera House reopened in 2022 after a long restoration, and the interior now stands up to anything in Vienna at a fraction of the ticket price.
December means The Nutcracker, which the Hungarian National Ballet stages every year and which sells out early. Book as far ahead as you possibly can.
If the tickets are gone, or a whole evening isn’t on the cards, the building runs guided tours during the day that finish with a short live vocal performance.
Even the cheap seats are worth having. The ceiling fresco is arguably better viewed from up there anyway.
15. Hear An Organ Concert Inside St. Stephen’s Basilica
The Basilica runs a regular programme of organ and classical concerts inside the church itself, and December brings Christmas repertoire to it.
The room does most of the work. It stands ninety six metres tall, exactly level with the Parliament, a number picked for the year 896 when the Magyars arrived, and the sound moves through a space that size accordingly.
Tickets are sold at the door and online, and they’re cheap measured against a concert almost anywhere else in Europe.
Wear a coat you can keep on. The Basilica is beautiful and it is not heated to anything like a comfortable temperature.
16. Duck Into Gozsdu Courtyard
Gozsdu Courtyard is a chain of six linked courtyards running through seven buildings in the Jewish Quarter, connecting Király Street to Dob Street.
It’s covered for most of its length and strung with lights, which makes it the natural place to end up once the markets shut and the temperature drops.
Bars, restaurants and a weekend design market fill the passages. It’s busy and loud and not remotely peaceful, so treat it as a night out rather than a quiet drink.
The ruin bars sit a few minutes away in the same neighbourhood if the night decides to keep going.
17. Ride Out To The Szentendre Christmas Market
Szentendre is a baroque riverside town about twenty kilometres north of Budapest, and it’s the standard day trip out of the city for good reason.
The HÉV suburban train leaves from Batthyány tér and takes around forty minutes, running on a normal transport ticket with a small supplement added.
Advent weekends bring a small market to the main square, and the town already looks the part the rest of the time thanks to the pastel houses and the cobbled lanes running down to the Danube.
It’s a half day rather than a full one. Go in the morning and you’ll be back in the city in time for the light show.
More Things To Do In Budapest At Christmas
A few things didn’t quite earn a numbered spot but are worth knowing about before going.
Forralt bor is the Hungarian mulled wine, and most stalls charge a deposit on the mug that comes back when the mug does. Keep the receipt, or just keep the mug, which is what most people end up doing.
Bejgli is the Christmas cake here, a tight roll of pastry filled with poppy seed or walnut, and every bakery in the city sells it through December. It looks unpromising and it is very good.
Szimpla Kert, the original ruin bar, runs a farmers market on Sunday mornings, which is a completely different room from the one it becomes at night. The Hospital in the Rock, a cold war bunker and hospital dug into the Buda hill, is a good use of an afternoon when the weather turns.
When To Visit Budapest For The Christmas Markets
The markets generally open in the middle of November and run through to the end of December, with the Vörösmarty Square one usually staying open into the first day of the new year.
Exact dates get confirmed late, often not until September or October. Check before booking a trip around one specific weekend.
December in Budapest hovers around freezing, and it’s a damp cold that comes straight off the river. Snow is possible rather than reliable, so plan for grey and treat a white day as a bonus.
The first half of December is noticeably calmer than the week before Christmas. Worth knowing that plenty of stalls and restaurants close on the twenty fourth and twenty fifth, while the baths and the main square markets generally keep going.
Final Thoughts
Nobody needs all seventeen of these in one trip, and there are more things to do in Budapest than a long weekend has room for anyway. The city is small enough that most of this sits within a few tram stops of everything else.
What makes Budapest at Christmas different from the other market cities is that the markets aren’t the whole trip. Once the stalls shut there’s still a thermal bath open, a lit up river, an opera house and a café that looks like a palace.
Vienna and Prague are lovely and they know it. Budapest is the one where the same trip costs about half as much and the hot springs come included.
