The Várkert Bazár

Miklós Ybl, the architect who also built the city's opera house, created this between 1875 and 1883 as the base of the royal gardens: a terraced gallery climbing up to the palace, with a row of shops along the riverside below. The shops never did well, and before long it was sculptors working in those spaces rather than merchants.

The war left it badly damaged, and what came afterwards was a second life Ybl could never have imagined. From 1961 to 1984 this was home to the Budai Ifjúsági Park, the open-air stage where every Hungarian rock band of those years played, until the structure grew too dangerous and the whole place was locked up. By 1996 it had made the list of the hundred most endangered monuments in the world. Not until 2014 did it look the way you see it now.

We follow the water further north, towards the bridge with the two stone gateways.