Wild Budapest: Bats, the Buda Hills and the Great Plain

The natural side of Budapest, from the protected cave system beneath the Buda Hills, a winter roost for bats, to the forests and trails of the hills, Margaret Island in the Danube and the grasslands and salt lakes of Kiskunság National Park, with a directory of the parks in our guide.

Budapest is famous for its baths, and the same warm water that fills them has hollowed out the hills of Buda. Beneath the city lies a maze of caves where bats spend the winter; above them, wooded hills rise to over 500 metres, laced with trails a tram ride from the centre; and the Danube holds Margaret Island, a car-free park in the middle of the river.

This is a short, honest guide to Budapest’s natural side: the hills, the caves, the river, and, for a day out, the Great Plain. Bring walking shoes and a jacket for the caves, which stay cool all year.

The Buda Hills

Behind Buda, the wooded hills climb to over 500 metres. From the meadow at Normafa, forest walks lead up to the Elizabeth Lookout on János Hill, the highest point in the city; the Zugliget Chairlift and the narrow-gauge Children’s Railway, run by children apart from the drivers, are the gentle ways up.

The Danube and the Great Plain

Margaret Island stretches for two and a half kilometres in the middle of the Danube, a largely car-free park of lawns, old trees and medieval ruins, reached from the Margaret and Árpád bridges; on the Buda bank, Római-part is a long stretch of riverbank for a walk by the water.

For a day on the Great Plain, Kiskunság National Park protects grasslands, salt lakes and sand dunes between the Danube and the Tisza, south of the city.

Under the villas of Buda, bats sleep through the winter in caves carved by thermal water.

Feature: the bats of the thermal caves

The caves under the Buda Hills were formed not by rain from above but by warm thermal water rising from below. Eight of them, among them the Pál-völgyi and Mátyás-hegyi caves, have been linked into a single cave system under heightened protection, according to the Duna-Ipoly National Park Directorate.

The Pál-völgyi cave is a winter roost for bats, above all the lesser horseshoe bat, with greater horseshoe bats, mouse-eared and Daubenton’s bats among the others recorded there.

Did you know? The caves beneath Budapest were carved by the same warm thermal water that feeds the city’s famous baths.

Our advice

Our advice: take the Children’s Railway or the chairlift up into the Buda Hills on a weekday and walk back down through the woods; join a guided tour of the Pál-völgyi or Szemlő-hegyi cave, and never touch or disturb roosting bats. On Margaret Island, hire a bike and go early.