The Palotanegyed — the Palace Quarter — is the most aristocratic pocket of Pest, the streets where the Hungarian nobility built their town palaces within sight of the National Museum. It survived the century better than most of the city, and walking it in the afternoon is a lesson in how grandly people once lived a few minutes from the ring road.
Start on the steps of the Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, the Neoclassical pile where the 1848 revolution found its stage, then loop its walled garden for the busts and the planes. Behind it, Pollack Mihály tér gives you the palace façades head-on; Bródy Sándor utca is the street to walk slowly, reading doorways. Crane your neck — the detail is all above eye level.
The set piece is the Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár, the public library wrapped inside a former palace: gilded reading rooms and chandeliers you can simply walk up into. End among the university streets and their bookshops, with the M4 at Rákóczi tér to carry you out.
