It runs along the Southern part of the Váci street (between Fővám Square and Ferenciek Square). The area enclosed by the line of Danube - Liberty Bridge – Kálvin square – Astoria square – Erzsébet Bridge is practically the ancient Pest side.
If you turn into any street of this neighbourhood you will be enchanted and you will find yourself continuing to discover this small and isolated part of Pest side. It is the ancient Pest side, with its 500-year-old, small and winding streets (and other details) this area keeps up that good old milieu.
It is well known for Liberty Bridge, the Southern part of the Váci shopping street, the Large Market Hall (a spacious building with a decorative iron frame roof, with a frizzly feeling) and the shiny Vámház Boulvard with its airy feeling thanks to its early eclectic buildings.
Unfortunately, the Danube bank is neglected here as all along the river in Budapest.
Egyetem square, a newly cobblestoned and pedestrian-friendly public space surrounded by coffeeshops, is the heart of the Old Town and the landscaped and gated Károlyi Garden is just a corner away. It is open every day from sunrise until sunset and its calmness and greenery attracts everyone who is fed up with bricks and blocks: couples, singles, the old and the young and here are playgrounds for children of different ages as well.
The neighbourhood is marked by its meandering, charmful, quiet streets with familiar or fancy restaurants, pubs, coffee-shops, small individual shops such as family-owned handmade cholcolate shop in Királyi Pál Street, up-start designer’s or special profile fashion shops in Királyi Pál St., Heiszlmann St.. The second-hand book and papery stores (with foreign language books and maps as well) are in Museum Boulvard side by side.
Almost all the buildings are classical (early and late eclectic), merely a few blocks were built between the World Wars and there are no new buildings – but a lot of new rooftop projects were finished in the last decade that placed modern apartments on the uppermost floors of the old buildings. Moreover, there are some buildings where only the facade is the original and anyway all the building is restructured and/or renewed (e.g. the small rent house in Bástya St.).
There are even some stone buildings here from the 18. century and around Kálvin square you can find the parts of the Pest castrum walls as part of the wall of some 1900’s buildings or their fences. Almost all streets of the neighbourhood have been renovated and covered with elegant cobblestone or granite covers. The area is safe and pedestrian-friendly.
There is quick access from here to some Universities: to Corvinus University, Andrássy University and ELTE Astoria on foot; but it is a good location for Semmelweis University, Budapest Technology and the University of Economics students as well.
