Ruin bars: how Budapest turned ruins into bars

About Ruin bars: how Budapest turned ruins into bars

By the ULTIMATE Budapest Editorial Team

At the start of the 2000s, young Budapesters began opening bars in the abandoned buildings of the old Jewish Quarter, filling empty courtyards with flea-market furniture, art and fairy lights. The romkocsma, or ruin bar, was born, and it became Budapest’s most famous contribution to nightlife.

Bars in the ruins

District VII, the old Jewish Quarter, had many empty and decaying buildings in the 1990s and 2000s. Their courtyards, waiting for demolition or renovation, were cheap to rent, and a group of friends realised they could become bars, open-air in summer, with junk-shop furniture and a do-it-yourself spirit.

Szimpla Kert

Szimpla Kert, which moved into a former stove factory on Kazinczy utca in 2004, became the most famous. Its maze of rooms is filled with old computers, a Trabant car, bicycles and art, and every surface is covered in graffiti and messages.

Budapest’s most famous bars began as squats in crumbling courtyards.

More than a bar

Ruin bars are also cultural spaces, with concerts, film screenings and markets: on Sunday mornings Szimpla hosts a farmers’ market. Others, such as Instant-Fogas, have grown into huge complexes of rooms and dance floors.

Ruin bars today

The district is now Budapest’s busiest nightlife quarter, and residents and the city have pushed for quieter nights; respect the neighbours when you leave late.

Our advice: visit Szimpla in the early evening to see it before the crowds, or on a Sunday morning for the market, then explore the garden bars of Kazinczy and Klauzál utca. Carry cash for the smaller bars, and keep your voice down in the streets after midnight.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Ruin bars: how Budapest turned ruins into bars before you go.