The Pest bank of the Danube is where Budapest puts its best face to the water, and this short stretch holds the city's grandest building, its hardest memorial, and the promenade that watches Buda across the river. Do it towards evening, when the castle opposite lights up and the embankment goes gold.
Start in Kossuth Lajos tér, in front of the Országház — the Parliament, neo-Gothic and enormous, best read head-on from the square before you drop to the water. Walk south along the embankment to the Shoes on the Danube: sixty pairs of iron shoes cast into the stone at the waterline, marking the people shot here into the river in the winter of 1944. It asks nothing of you but to stand still, and you should.
Carry on to Széchenyi István tér at the foot of the Lánchíd (the Chain Bridge), past the Academy and the Gresham Palace, then onto the Duna-korzó, the promenade, with Buda's castle filling the far bank. Turn in at Vörösmarty tér, where the 1896 M1 line runs home from beneath the square.
