New Budapest: the buildings reshaping the city

Budapest is best known for its 19th-century grandeur, but the city has been building again, and boldly. City Park has become a museum quarter, the Opera has moved its workshops into a vast railway hall, and a new tower has changed the skyline of south Buda.

City Park reborn

City Park, behind Heroes’ Square, is Budapest’s oldest public park, and over the past decade the Liget Budapest project has turned it into one of the most ambitious museum quarters in Europe, placing new buildings among the old plane trees while restoring the park around them. Come on a weekday morning and you can see three of its new buildings in a single walk.

The House of Music Hungary

Opened in January 2022 and designed by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, the House of Music sits under a wavy, leaf-patterned canopy pierced with openings, some of them for the trees that grow straight through the roof. Glass walls make the building feel part of the park. Inside are an interactive exhibition on the history of music, a sound dome and concert halls, with a lively programme of concerts and events.

The new Museum of Ethnography

Across the park, the Museum of Ethnography opened in its first purpose-built home on 23 May 2022. Designed by Marcel Ferencz of Napur Architect, it rises from the ground in two curving wings, with most of the building below the surface, and you can walk up onto its planted roof for views over the park and the city. The permanent exhibition shows almost 3,600 objects, Hungarian and from around the world.

The Biodome

The newest arrival is at Budapest Zoo, on the park’s edge, where the Urban Oasis opened in the Biodome on 1 July 2026: about a hectare of indoor tropical and subtropical landscape, with animals and life-sized prehistoric reptiles. It is a good wet-day choice with children.

The Eiffel Art Studios

In the Kőbánya district, the Hungarian State Opera has given new life to the former Northern Railway repair works, a vast iron-and-brick complex built in the 1880s and named after Gustave Eiffel. Its five-nave hall now holds the Opera’s workshops and stores, rehearsal rooms and the Miklós Bánffy Stage, which seats an audience of more than 400.

In the main hall, a restored steam locomotive of the 1910s pulls a 1912 dining car that houses a restaurant. Tours of the complex start at the János Feketeházy Visitor Centre, which also has a Transport Museum exhibition.

In City Park, a golden canopy pierced with openings lets the trees grow straight through the roof.

MOL Campus

On the Buda bank in the south of the city, MOL Campus, the headquarters of the Hungarian energy group, opened in 2022. Designed by Foster + Partners with the Budapest practice Finta Studio, its tower rises to 143 metres, the tallest building in Hungary. It is an office building, not a visitor attraction: you see it best from the river, the bridges and the Buda Hills.

Müpa, the Ludwig Museum and the galleries

Müpa, the Palace of Arts, opened in 2005 beside the Danube in south Pest, with the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, the Festival Theatre and the Ludwig Museum, Budapest’s leading museum of contemporary art, under one roof, so you can see an exhibition and stay for a concert. For the commercial scene, start at acb on Király utca and Kisterem in the inner city, founded in 2006 to show progressive Hungarian art.

Art Market Budapest, an international contemporary art fair, takes place each October, and Budapest Design Week fills the autumn with exhibitions, studio visits and talks. Check both programmes when you plan an autumn visit.

Our advice: give City Park a full day: the House of Music in the morning, lunch nearby, the Museum of Ethnography and its roof in the afternoon, and a soak at the Széchenyi Baths to finish. Book an Eiffel Art Studios tour or a performance on the Bánffy Stage ahead, and see Müpa on a concert night.