Erzsébetváros holds two things at once: the heart of Jewish Pest, with the largest synagogue in Europe, and the ruin-bar quarter that grew up inside its abandoned buildings. Do it in the early evening, when the light is good on the synagogue and the bars are open but not yet queued.
Start at the Dohány utca synagogue — Moorish, twin-towered, built in the 1850s — and walk round to the silver willow in the memorial garden behind it. North to the striped-brick Rumbach street synagogue, a young Otto Wagner's work, then into the ghetto proper down Kazinczy utca. This is where the quarter turns: the Orthodox synagogue set back in its courtyard, then the bars.
Szimpla Kert is the original ruin bar, a wreck filled with salvage and plants; walk the courtyard and the rooms whether or not you drink. Then Gozsdu udvar, seven courtyards strung into one covered passage. End on Király utca, where the lanes give way to Andrássy's mansions in a single block — the Opera and the M1 a short walk west.
